Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1. Three different tournaments, coach Neil Roberts and three different championship games tonight. I guess it's obvious you're hoping to come home with the title. Well, we've had enough second places thus far. We've been of course felt good about our wins in each of the tournaments. But this one especially our players have played well and have really played some better competition than we had in the other tournaments. But tonight, of course, every championship game in Fullerton just down the street from our game is going to be tough. They're well balanced basketball team and one that should give us some problems. And they're the defending champions of this tournament. Yes, they won it last year. Of course we were out of town by this time last year. We didn't get this far with it. But having a chance to watch them play several times, they're one of the better basketball teams. They shoot the ball, they're quick, they're aggressive and they play with a lot of enthusiasm. And of course being their almost their home floor, they play a lot of games here in Santa Ana. Of course they're going to be tough. It looks like the Santa Ana crowd will be on Dixie's side. What crowd there might be from Santa Ana? Well, I don't think crowd becomes a factor much. They don't really come out to watch their junior college basketball here as we're used to in the other parts of the United States. So we have a chance to play but they're, you know, who knows, I don't see how we could have too many that are on our side. But there's a few people have traveled down from St. George that make a lot of noise. It's a lot of fun to have them here. As you went into this tournament, we talked about how you were hoping that the team could make a step up from the plateau it apparently hit. It made the step up. Yes, it has. Without question. We've played the best basketball we've played thus far, especially last night. We played quite well a couple of nights ago in our first game. But last night against Santa Ana was the best basketball we've played thus far, including the Brazil game that we had an excellent ball game in. We are quick, we are aggressive, but the thing that's really come along with our basketball team has been our defense. The defense has been eye popping for all of the fans. Well, one of the reporters came up after the ball game and says, is this the way they play defense in junior college in Utah? Naturally my response was, well, it's the way we hope we play Defense because we did a lot of things. We, we ran some combinations but basically our defense was man to man and boy, they did a good job. They were quick and aggressive. Our forwards especially forced theirs to the outside and felt really good about the way they did that. And whenever you force your forwards to the outside, it really disrupts the offense and makes it difficult not only to shoot but also to pass out of that. Their key player in the ball game that we had last night against Santa Anna was a four big strong kid, he's named Shaw and he didn't even score the first half and that was Johnny Judkins that did that. Just played excellent defense with him. You took the kids out of their normal shooting positions. Fullerton, what do you look for now? Who will be the key people? Well, their best scorers throughout the year have been their guards with Veal, especially a 63 guard that shoots the ball extremely well. In fact, I think he had 27 last night and he's really a big player and if we can control him, of course, then we're going to be in decent shape. You're not going to shut down a player like that, but you can control him. A lot has been said in California, including the LA Times this morning, talking about Avery Parish, about how effective he is and how he plays a total ball game. He passes the ball and dribbles the ball and he plays defense and shoots the ball. He did have a bunch of points last night, especially a bunch of points and sat down for 10, 10 minutes in the ball game, but yet it's the rest of the basketball team. This enables Abe to do that. They're of course, very active and they pass the ball well and the rest of them, if they're left open, will score. So it enables Averon to be a better player because they have to play him one to one and can't team up with him. If you have to look at any position that's improved in this tournament, center looks to be the position. Well, I don't know if that's really improved any more than our point guard position. It's really an obvious turnaround because both Roger and Brandt have are doing an excellent job as far as rebounding and especially their activity on defense. Their hands are on things, they're working hard, they're fronting people and we can keep them fresh because there's two of them. But last night our point guard position with Mark Durant especially just was as good as we've had in years and doesn't turn the ball over and Got the ball to the open people and I think that that improvement is as significant as our center position. Mark is concentrating a lot on assists and has been picking up an armload each night. Well, that's really his responsibility. Not just to score when the opportunity is there, but his job is to make sure the offense runs. It's to make sure that the open people get the basketball. And for the first time really all year long, he really did that. He didn't force things, he just got the ball. The open people. We have some of the players who are milling around as we're going through this interview and I almost hate to ask about Ricky Henry with Ricky standing right behind you but Rick is has had a good tournament. The first game last night struggled a little bit still effects of the flu. Well, I think that all of us that have been ill and especially when you're involved in activities know that when you come back after a layoff and after being sick that the first night back you're usually fine. The next night back is when you really get stiff and sore. But really it's. We're really dependent on him to play well tonight. He's the one player that can match up with feelings, that has his quickness, that can go outside and play defense as well as go inside as he does. And so we really need him to play well tonight and if he doesn't play well we could be in trouble handling him. John Judkins once again the key man tonight. Yeah, he always is. John carries a big load boards offensively and defensively but John just does the things that have to be done. Fits into the mold of a motion offense. Some nights with motion offense you have the shot, some nights you have the good shots. Other nights it's not there. And John's mature enough to realize that some nights he's going to get 20, 25 points, other nights he's going to get 8 or 10 points and it just happens to. That's the way it evolves. In motion offense, who is open, who has the weak defensive man playing against him makes a lot of difference. Generally we've been saying keys defense, rebounds again probably defense and rebounds. Well yes it is. Plus they run a little three quarter zone trap. When they run that zone trap can create problems and we're going to have to really watch that and not turn the ball over against it. So the pressure on the defense from their side. Well, we have the philosophy that if people are going to press us that we're going to try to break the press and of Course, make them pay for their pressure, not just to break the press, but try to score out of it. And if we can extend their defense and use it as a total offense to the other end of the floor, then of course it's going to be our advantage. We really, when we scout a team, we really look at the way they handle pressure. If they break the pressure and then reset, we'll press all the time because why does it hurt? If you get beat, they're going to stop, come back and reset anyway, so you might as well press. And we just go with the opposite situation that if they're going to press us, then we're going to try to score out of it. We might turn the ball over a few times trying to score out of it, but yet it's better to do that in the reception. Reset and let them regroup their defense to come back and attack you again. Fullerton, good scoring. Ball club, an active ball club, it's going to be a challenge. Plus, they play with a lot of enthusiasm. They have a lot of fun on the floor. It's important to them to play well. They have a great tradition here. They've won this tournament several times, something we haven't done having been here the last five years and something that Santa Ana hasn't done. They haven't won their own tournament yet, but Fullerton has won it's a several times. Coach Neil Roberts, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry. 3, 2, 1. Coach Neil Roberts I guess the phrase out of the frying pan into the fire would be apropos from one tournament to another. Well, it's a continuation on one more step up. I've been so impressed with preparation for this tournament. We've been to a lot of different junior college basketball tournament since I've been there. We try to go to four or five of them a year and we travel a lot of miles to get there. Preseason tournament wise, we've been to the National Junior College Kickoff Tournament back in Hutchinson. We've been to several in California every year. We've been to the Valley of the sun here, and in past years we've had our own tournament. We've been to one of the really good ones in the K and T Steel tournament. But the preparation the Rotary clubs made for this tournament, as well as the coaching staff and the athletic director from Mesa is just really great. This is as close an atmosphere as we could possibly get to to the national tournament. Part of that is the fact that you have people coming from the four Corners of the states. Well, that's true. When you bring them in from New Jersey and Philadelphia and Kansas and New Mexico and Utah and Arizona, you brought them from all over. And those of us in St. George that have had a chance to go back to the national tournaments, the name Colby, Kansas, the name of Allegheny, Pennsylvania and Mercer, they mean a great deal to us because those teams are always in the national tournament. And so when we get this tournament together here, and with what they've done as preparations to really make it the way they have, this is big time. And I really take my hat off to Tom Bennett and Carville Jackson for the preparation they've made to get these teams in here and. And to create this type of atmosphere. We were to a banquet last night with all the teams there, and it was really a great feeling. It's really different to get all eight teams in a room together, and you look at each other and think, well, boy, look how big they are. And this is a team that we've heard so much about. And it's a friendly atmosphere, but yet it creates a great feeling. And I know our players are. Are really looking forward to playing in this. It's all the players, all the teams that came in here staying here are all staying in the same place, and it's a great place to stay, and it's a great atmosphere. Part of this tournament that gives it the feeling of the national tournament with the teams coming from all around the United States. Part of that is to get a chance to feel out what junior college is like in other parts of the country. Well, at times, of course, we here in the west feel neglected as far as publicity is concerned. And as far as national rankings are concerned, when you get Allegheny and when you get Mercer, that are always nationally ranked in Colby, Kansas, it gives us a chance here at Dixie and Mesa and Central to play against them, to play with them, to find out where we really stand and if their rating is really legitimate, of course it lets us know. And if the team that we're playing the first round has lost a few ball games, but I can't believe the lead will come competition that they have played. They have played Howard, which is probably the best team in Texas, at Howard. And of course, it was a pretty good ball game. They have beat, or they have also played Sequoia out of California. That's one of the. Maybe the best team in California, a team that beat Snow quite handily. And so they really played good people. And that does nothing but really help your team as far as level of competition is concerned. In other words, Dixie College in this tournament has moved into the big league. And if we can really play and do our part here, it's going to say a lot for our program. I mentioned New Mexico Junior College and the competition they've had so far. The national champion in most of the recent years has come out of their corner of the country. They play some of these teams. They and New Mexico Military are the only two New Mexico teams in what is an all Texas league. Well, they were right on the border there, so you can drop right over into Texas, and Texas is. There's two regions down there. There's a lot of junior colleges. They have a lot of money. They recruit from all over the United States. And you're right, in the last five years, four of those five times they've come out of Texas. And so they do play as strong a league as you can possibly play in. And, you know, it's nice that we drew a team of that caliber the first game. They have an excellent big player at 6' 9, 235, and is a sophomore, and he's back and he has a lot of confidence, and they really think a great deal of him. And so it will really be a challenge for our people this time. But yet I don't think that Dixie College really needs to take a back seat and say, what are we doing in this tournament? Are we the weak sister here? Are we really in this classification? Right now, we're 10 and three. And Dixie has always played the strongest competition as we can possibly get a hold of. And we're not afraid to go to the K and T where they bring teams in from all over. We're not afraid to go to Los Angeles and play our games, and we'll go anywhere we can play good people. And it's nice that now that they have this great tournament here so close to home, only eight hours away, that we have a chance to play in this. And we just came off one of the really big wins we've had in a tournament situation in Los Angeles, and we're extremely proud of that. And we're coming in here and people are looking at Dixie and saying, boy, they're coming in here at 10 and 3, and they just won the San Invitational. You know, what do we really have a hold of here? And it's great for our young team to play in this competition, because if we can play with it, if we happen to win some games here, if we happen to win this tournament, it's got to do Nothing to our 11 players other than tell them that, hey, if you play well and play hard, you play with anyone in the United States. That's something Dixie's found on their two trips to Hutchinson, Kansas, that there is as fine a basketball here as there is in any other part of the country. Well, without question, our conference this year could be as strong a conference as there is with Snow being extremely good this year. We know how strong Ricks is because they've beaten us twice and we're getting better and better each time out. Utah Technical College is going to enter into the conference pitcher this year. They're an excellent basketball team with good size. They've won a tournament this year and they're going to be competitive. And evidently CEU is really starting to play well. So our conference could be, even though number wise we don't have 20 teams in our conference, could be as good a conference as there is anywhere. New Mexico Junior College, do they press? They like to run on offense. What else do you know? Well, they're big for one thing with the one player. Every team in here is interesting. Every team in here is a freshman oriented type of situation. Colby Kansas has all freshmen on their team. Of course, we only have one that plays very much and so we're really a freshman team as well. And three of their starters that start on New Mexico are freshmen as well. But yet we get so concerned about the age of a team. But by the end of the year everyone's the same. You've gone through 30 ball games. We're all sophomores at that stage. And if we can look back in retrospect on what we've really tried to accomplish at Dixie, that team that took third in the nation started three freshmen and so we're starting four right now. But yet if our players keep coming along, those are special players. Ricky Henry is playing extremely well right now. I don't know of any player his freshman year that's played any better than Avery Parish has in the short time in 13 ball games. He's a accomplished a great deal and improved a great deal. And Brent Stevenson is starting to come into his own, as is Roger McDonald. And these are young players that haven't had a great lot of experience, especially Brandt because he didn't have very good high school experience. But yet they're really starting to play well. And John Judkins is a red shirt freshman. But yet what a great story that is as well. Yes, we are young, but so is everyone else. And you don't use age as as much Barrier, use talent as a barrier. And when you get into this type of level, all the teams here have talent. It's just who really wants to win. And there's going to be some great basketball here this weekend. The team reached above a plateau they'd hit when they went to California. They stretched out beyond that. What do you hope to do with this tournament? Just more of the same. Yes. I would be very satisfied with playing the rest of the year at the level we played, Saint if we could play at that level every ball game with the intensity and the free and easy and get out and really enjoy yourself type of basketball, I think everyone can be completely satisfied with that. We played well enough in that ball game to be able to look back on that game and say, when we play Ricks and Snow and the different teams that are extremely strong for us, so we don't have to rise above anything we've done before. And that's comfortable feeling from a coach's standpoint to know that you don't have to ask your players to play above anything they've accomplished. If they can just play to their potential as we did that particular game, you have an excellent chance to win. And that's really, from their standpoint, a real confidence booster to know that if they play as well as they're capable of playing, they can win. Not play above their level, but play to their level. I sense an excitement in you going into this tournament as a coach. Well, don't you feel that as well? You know, you travel with us a lot and you can't help but get close to what's going on. The only way that you really become a true basketball fan, and even as an announcer, you have to become a basketball fan of the team you travel with. I feel excitement for several reasons. First of all, we have an excellent chance to win. And from a coach's standpoint, if you don't have a chance to win, it's really a long year. If you're going into ball games thinking, boy, I hope we don't get embarrassed here, then it's really a long year. But if you can go into it with the attitude of, boy, if we just play to our potential, we can win no matter what level it is, then, boy, the excitement has to come back into the game. Several other reasons this year excites me for the first time in several years. Well, two years. I really like the players. I really like our basketball team. I enjoy traveling with them. I enjoy going to dinner with them. I enjoy practicing with them. And when you like your team, it's fun. And I like this group of kids, a little different group of kids. They're a little more hard nosed, they're a little more competitive than we had especially last year. And even though last year's basketball team had some great people on it, people that will be extremely successful in life and people that are going to go on and do the types of things that are important, important. This is a special group of kids. John Judkins has to be a favorite with me. You know, you ask him to redshirt, you completely broke his spirit at one time that he thought his athletic career was through and now to see his successes and to see his attitudes makes you really feel comfortable with it. Mark Durant had some problems earlier playing extremely well. We took Mark and completely changed his game and asking to do things that he hadn't been asked to do before and really took away a lot of the things that he thought were important and now he's being successful with it. Dave Perry's comes in and here's a black kid that came from a poor environment that had a pretty good high school career, but not outstanding. He came into Dixie College and came in at £235. We asked him to lose some weight and change some things about his game and took him away from the basket, moved him more to the outside. Now he's down to £214 and playing better than he's ever played in his life. And it just lifted him up and lifted our whole team and what a pleasant person to be around. He just pulls everyone in and everyone feels comfortable around. Ricky Henry is a center in high school, great jumper, great inside player. We took him and moved him to a guard and asking to change his game is to going well. Brent Stevenson came in. I walked on at Dixie because his friend went there and happened to be our mascot, our rebel and loved Dixie. And Brent was really set to go to Rick's. He was a returned missionary that I guess that was the thing to do was to go to Rick's and he came down here and he and I got along well and he worked for me last summer, spent a lot of extra time in his game and now it's all happening for him. Our freshman that came in was a little different type of recruit. We really made an effort to get a tough, hard nosed player that won't back away and I think we have that very close team, very close people, but yet for the most part, blue fuse and for the most part I've really learned to accept the challenges of traveling in junior college and for them to do that that early is. Is kind of a unique situation from our standpoint from a coaching staff. We don't have an assistant coach this year. And so maybe that's really changed my attitude towards the team as well, is because you're directly responsible for the success of every player and only having one person there. You do everything in the world for them, from get them up in the morning to put them to bed at night and everything in between. Coach Neil Roberts Great group of kids. Good luck today. Thank you. Looking forward to the game. I really expect to be the first game of the tournament. Hopefully it will come out our way and tomorrow we'll play the late one. You want to say something? Talk, talk. 3, 2, 1. Coach Neil Roberts this warm up is definitely needed tonight for the kids. Isn't it different weather than what we're used to In St. George? It's snowy and ice and has snowed off and on the whole time we've been up here in Salt Lake for the last week, and today, especially coming up the canyon to Logan was really cold. Many people wonder what happens with the Dixie College basketball team when the kids are out of school. What happened this year? Well, the last three years we've done the same thing. Most of our kids are from Salt Lake and Provo area. So we have them go home and end the coaches go to Salt Lake and we practice in Salt Lake for two weeks and we'll be here. We've been here for a week. And then we'll play this game tonight and we play BYU tomorrow night and then we'll give them until Christmas off and then we go to California for a week and we come back for two days and then we go to Arizona for a week. So school really doesn't end for the kids. No, they'll have three days off in this whole holiday. So you really can't bring your players to a certain point in entire tell them take three weeks off and expect to come back and improve from where you were. I just have a hard time with that. They're here to learn. They're really a young team and I just don't think we can take that amount of time off. This game against Utah State junior varsity has been an interesting game, a landmark game for some of your teams. It's been a landmark game for some of the junior varsity ballplayers at Utah State. Well, it has. Some of them had their best games. Ball. I remember when Hammer was with us, Craig Hammer, and he had 42 I believe up here that night and got outscored by Beck, which plays with the varsity right now. So some of our players have the very best games. Some of them have a hard time in this arena because it's a little different. It's bigger than we're used to playing in and they have multi colored seats. It looks like autumn in here with the oranges and yellows and, and brown tones. But because of that without a crowd it's hard to. Hard to pick up a background and then they don't turn out the lights and so it's difficult to shoot. Seems like some of them either shoot it extremely well in here or really have a tough time. It's always been a good game for us. This is one of the JV teams that we have lost to about half the time. This floor apparently is one of the best to play on in this day. I don't know, I'd assume that. Well, Weber, our players really like Weber and that's beautiful. I think Weber's the prettiest arena in the state but they enjoy playing at Utah. They play a lot more games there because most of these kids play the state tournaments there. Then BYU is just so darn big that it's hard to play there. This game tonight against Utah State Junior varsity. When you come here, they drop a lot of varsity players. Well, we ask them to for one thing, but we want to play against kids that they know that. That they are good that they have to compete against. And so they do that on purpose and not just because they want to get to Dixie College because we ask them to do so. This also gives the kids a taste of what it's like to play at a major college facility. This is definitely major college facility. Oh, without question with the major college program. A preliminary to the Utah, Utah State game is one of the big games in the state of Utah. It will be on TV tonight and there will be a heck a of crowd and our players will get to sit and watch the game. And it's a big occasion for our players. It's also like an ICAC homecoming. You have two Dixie kids here and a rigs kid that's playing here. Well, Utah State's really turned to a lot of JC players. I know they're recruiting them again this year. Their guard, they actually could start four JC players and one of the best teams in Utah which says a lot for the icac. But we have a lot of affection here because Pretty Chris and Ron both play here. When you've been around those two Guys for a couple of years you really can't help but pull for Utah State. It's always a nice homecoming, boy, I'll say it is. And we enjoy seeing them and they have a good time when we're here and so we really, it's a lot of fun to see and they always, every time we're up here, they seem to play extremely well. Let's talk about your squad now. You're coming off another tough loss at the hands of Riggs College. Very good Riggs College team. They were that particular night. We have yet to have a team. Well, the last three weeks we haven't had our whole team here yet. We've had situations where a couple players got disciplined and then Brent Stevenson got sick and last weekend John Judkins got hurt and this weekend Ricky Henry won't be playing tonight because he has a flu. He's here, he's sitting here, but he just, he can't even talk, he has such a sore throat. So he definitely won't play tonight, probably not tomorrow night as well. So we've yet to have a full team here, but that's part of preseason. If they're going to get ill, let's have it this time of year rather than later on. John Judkins has recovered pretty much. So yeah, he's still not full go. He's limited in some of the things he does. But we've been practicing up here and each day he gets better and better in practice. So he'll play tonight. One of the advantages if you're going to have flu and illness, discipline problems. One of the advantages of having them preseason is it gives you a chance to use that bench more. Oh, it does, yes. And plus it lets the players know that they're not inexpendable too because the players that come in do a good job and therefore their position is threatened. In fact, Mark hasn't got his starting position back. He'll start tonight because Ricky's ill, but he has not yet gained it back from Rob. He's pretty close, really close in fact. But yet Rob still starting. So Mark and Rob will start at the backcourt positions tonight. Yes, they will. We'll start both six foot guards so we'll be smart, small and we'll also, excuse me, we'll be starting two point guards. But yet in the motion offense we'll move Mark over and have him play the second guard which will hurt us on the boards and will hurt us defensively because Ricky's good defensively and he's a heck of a rebounder and it will hurt our inside game but yet should help our perimeter shooting too. Forward position. Is Judkins well enough to start? Yes, Judkins will start along with eight and then Roger will start in the center. But Brent's ready to go again and he'll play a lot tonight too. Dave Falcon will play a lot too. Dave is coming off one of his best efforts that second half against Ricks. It has. He's had an excellent week's practice. In fact, the whole team's practiced really well. I think we learned at Ricks you have to play a little harder than what we have to play against San Juan and some of the teams we've played that second half, the kids came out and played as hard as they played all year and played. Ricks even in fact at one time really were taking charge of the game but yet they learned a lot and that's really why we're playing preseason. Utah State University JV will run the same program that Rod Tuller at the varsity runs, right? I assume so. Which is basically a man to man. They will play some 2, 3 zone, they'll play some 1, 2, 2 zone, but they'll run motion offense. Now. I assume that's what they're going to do. I really don't know. For your ball players. We talked about the exposure to major college facilities, etc. Etc. But they this also is an exposure for them to major college recruiting. Gives Utah State University and University of Utah a chance to see the kids. Well, it sure does. And both coaches expressed an interest that they'd be here early to watch some of our players. The only thing is we're all young, we're all freshmen. They realize it's going to be a year, but they have expressed interest in some of our players and will be here to watch. So it's important for us to play well. Coach Neil Roberts, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry. 3, 2, 1. Coach Neil Roberts A great game last night for your kids. They got the shooting eye again and ran rough, shot well. It was easy to shoot the very poor defensive team and so we had a lot of wide open stuff, but they did shoot it well. They knocked it down a big arena that's sometimes difficult to shoot in and there was very few of them that had a tough time. John had a hard time the first half getting his jump shot to go and the second half of course moved inside a little more and didn't have that problem. But as a team we shot really well. Not only from the field, but from the line as well. Abraham Parrish put on quite a show on the boards. Rebounding, defensively, shooting. He was Utah State's coach is very important. Impressed with him after the ball game and he had an excellent game. He's a heck of a player and the longer we play, the better he gets. He's starting to do more than just shoot the ball now where the boards we mentioned, of course, were very important to us. And he's passing the ball better and he's playing better defense. He's really becoming a more complete player every game we play. Mark Duran has the rhythm back on his shooting. Yeah, he had a lot of points scored well and shot well. And it was a little different for for him because we played him at a second guard rather than the point guard, which is a little unique position for him, but yet may be better for him because it enables him to shoot the ball more. Rob Ross great first half especially and keyed the explosion early in that first half. Well, Rob loses concentration on the floor still and we got a long ways ahead and he was wandering around as far as what we were trying to do and what he was supposed to do, but yet did have a good first half. That team obviously not as good as most USU JV teams that you see at Logan, but it was all in all, still a pleasant effort. It was, you know, you're up 19 at halftime and you double that score for the end of the ball game. It was a pretty good thing. It was nice that all of them could play and most of them played quite well when they were on the floor. And it's a situation where we've been up here practicing for last week and it was nice they could all get in and play quite well. This will be a bigger test for us tonight. We'll play a good team. BYU traditionally drops down four to six ball players off the varsity to play in this JV game. Well, they will again too, and they'll be big and they've played together and they'll be a good test for us. We'll have to rebound better than we have done and it'll be one of the better JV teams we'll ever play. Now, you may or may not face Carl Pollard, depending on Whatell Anderson wants to do with the varsity game. They have a seven footer in that game tonight too. Well, that's true, of course. Carl Pollard is 7:2 now and still growing, so we don't know if he's going to play now. In fact, we don't know of any of them is going to play, but I'd imagine that they will drop down. The whole object of BYU's JV program different than most is he wants all of his players to play 28 ball games, which is a limit that they can play. And if they don't play in a varsity game, then they're going to play here no matter where they are as far as their varsity standings are concerned. So we could even play against seniors as far as that goes. You'll see some good shooters. You always do in this game. Well, whenever you're going against major college varsity players, they're good players. And I think one of the big differences between JC and varsity or JC and a four year school is at the four year school is if the shots open they're going to pretty well get it in the hole. Whereas in JC sometimes that player will miss. So you have to play a lot better defense and you have to concentrate with it a lot more. Ricky Henry will be on the sidelines again. Yeah, still has the flu, feels better than he did yesterday, but still can't even talk his throat's so sore. So he won't be playing the same starting lineup as last night. Yes, we will. No, excuse me, we won't. We'll be starting Brent in the middle instead of Roger and bring Roger off the bench. The other than that will be the same where we'll go with the two smaller guards out front with Rob and Mark and then John and Abram Forres and Brent Stevenson in the middle. Brent had the flu bug and at that point seemed to start to slip in the season. Last night was a step coming back up the other direction, starting to progress again. Well, he has. Not only that, but he's practiced really well this week. He's practiced aggressive and hard, shot the ball well and I thought played quite well. He's got a lot to learn and he's learning each time he plays. And so you have to have to keep that in mind. But yet also you have to keep in mind because of that situation that you want him to play as much as he possibly can. And he played actually more minutes than Roger did last night even though Roger started both halves. But he will start tonight. Let's talk a little bit about this will be your final game in preparation to the the two big tournaments that you have coming up. Two of the best tournaments. Some of the things that you hope to have accomplished in this game. Well, we're shooting the ball well and this might sound a little different. But sometimes when you shoot the ball well, it creates bad habits and it's easy to come down and just shoot the ball rather than work for the good shot. And we get in that habit of times when we're shooting 60, 65% for a ball game, you come down and just take the shot rather than have to get in and move the ball and screen and pick and work hard for what you get. Sometimes your good shooting teams get lazy offensively. And it's a tendency of our team where we hope to be able to run things and be disciplined with what we do, but yet at times we just come down and shoot the ball. And sometimes that shot doesn't go in and sometimes you have to really work for what what you get. And so it can develop bad habits. But we want to be patient with our offense. We want to be able to pick the ball up off the floor, pass the ball, screen with it and work hard off the ball to get free for the better shot. And then defensively, we didn't do a good job last night of playing defense before the man caught the basketball. We're letting them catch it and then trying to play. You can't do that defensively. You've got to play all your defense. Should take place before your man catches the ball. With the freshman dominated team at 10, takes a lot of extra schooling in the early preseason, doesn't it? It's all teaching. It's probably the most intense teaching situation that you can get in an educational system because not only do you have to teach and teach and teach, but if your players fail, the whole team fails. And so it's not just one player that doesn't pass the test. The whole team fails the test. And so eventually it gets the point across because of that. And next time out they'll play better because they know they have to do it to be successful. And it's kind of a trial and error thing. You almost have to fail before you succeed. Back to this game tonight and the results that may come out of this. Last two times in this gym, you've ended up with a three point game last year in overtime and you lost both of them against what was a varsity dominated team. Well, last year we had the ball game one. We had a substantial lead with very few minutes to play and their experience, they just took the ball game away and we missed free throws and they didn't. And they stole the ball a few times and we lost the game. We hadn't won. And the year before that we played really well. And Saralina, of course, really hurt us the year before, as he does all the time. But a great experience for our players to play in this situation where they know the players, they know they're good players, they know of their reputations, and our players seem to get up for it. The key will be the discipline. I believe so, yes. And to be able to shake off the atmosphere of this huge arena and just go ahead and play. Sometimes JV games at major schools are confusing because you got people coming in and out. There's a lot of commotion going on, and they're wheeling cameras in here and cameras in there. Pretty soon, here comes Paul James and here comes Bill Marcroft into the cane of the players really admire and watch every night on tv. And it's hard for them to keep their concentration in the game, in a game like this because of the confusion before. This is an impressive place. Do you ever sometimes down deep wish that they had had this when you were playing at byu? Well, you know, it's always up bigger and better type things. But the experience I had playing here, of course, playing at a different arena that held only eleven and a half thousand people, that they filled up every game. But it was a special atmosphere, intensity. And even you walk in there now after having not played for 15, 16 years, you still get that same feeling. There's nothing like playing at a major school, at a big game where the crowd really gets involved. And I think that the difference of playing in an arena like this or Utah or Utah State or Weber, then Dixie, is the enthusiasm, enthusiasm of the crowd. When you go out on the floor, the crowd goes crazy. When you go out on the floor of the Dixie, they hardly notice that you're there. When you score the major school, the crowd goes crazy. And here they. It's expected. I mean, at Dixie, it's expected. Someday maybe we'll get that atmosphere that everything's important, everything's exciting. And it's like the cheerleaders up at Utah State in that Utah. Utah State game. They were, you know, that was exciting to watch them as it was a ball game because they were so good. Utah national champions. And some of the things they did were spectacular and really get the crowd involved with what's going on. Not just the band and not just the students, but the whole crowd. And that's the major differences between the two. Our crowd's a little more passive and sits down and just watches, and hopefully we can get to that stage someday. You have a tendency to find that at junior colleges a lot and small Schools too small. Four years. Yes, you do, because it's kind of a blase situation. And even though the intensity is there and sometimes the level of play is extremely good, it's just taken for granted. And when you win a lot, they expect you to win and they expect the great plays. And when you beat people, so what? You've only lost three or four games here in the last five years. It's expected, but that's really not the case. You know, it should be important to all of us, not just the players. And hopefully we'll get that because we're playing some great teams in Dixie the rest of this year. Coach Neal Roberts, good luck tonight against byu jv and we'll see you later. Thank you. 3, 2, 1. Coach Neil Roberts. This is always a great test for your kids just prior to the conference season to come down to this tournament. Always. LA Junior college is down here. Of course, the very big schools have a great reputation for basketball and have a lot of pride in what they do. This is one of the best junior college tournaments on this particular coast. The two we play in our next two tournaments should have some of the best junior college teams in the United States. Tonight you're liable to run into a buzzsaw. Louisiana. Pierce has a good reputation. Well, they have. Last year they won their Metro Conference, which is the middle of la, a darn good school. They have three of their five starters back and they've won one of the tournaments down here already. This year I really expect to have one of the better teams to play against tonight. Looking over the rosters, it seems to be a typical junior college tournament. Most of the strength seems to be at the forward line on all of the schools. Well, that's typical of every junior college team. There's very few that have the dominant center, but their players are not only about the same size as ours. If anything, we might be able to taller, but they're all big. They're 2 5, 2 10, 2 15. So a good sized team. We don't really know what to expect from them. They haven't watched us play. And so I think the same thing is true with either team. Just go into it cold and see what happens. Looking at last night's results, a surprise. In that first game, Santa Monica was favored over Fullerton. Well, Santa Monica is supposedly one of the top five teams in the state of California, which is their national tournament, but they got beat in an overtime. And I was really impressed with Fullerton. Fullerton's lost some games earlier this year, but evidently they had some disciplines and some of their players did not play early in the year. That really contributed a great deal to them last night. They're a pretty good team. I was impressed with the way they played. I was impressed with LA Valley late on that they came up and beat saddleback by 18, which shows a lot of strength this tournament tonight, the game that follows yours will have the host team, Santa Anna, and it looks like Santa Ana has another powerhouse. Santa Ana, they said, is really rebounding the ball well, playing well inside and lost some games early in the year. In fact, they went one and four at one time, but yet their best player wasn't there, had some knee problems and since he's been back they really played quite well. So I guess it's kind of a monitor not only for us but for the rest of them to get all their players back and healthy. And for the first time in a long time We've got all 11 of our players that are ready to play. Ricky Henry is going to play using full strength, in fact has lost 17 pounds in the last two weeks because of tonsillitis, but yet he will play tonight. Mike Brown came on this tournament like he was on the verge of pneumonia, but has been sounding pretty good the last couple of days. Well, he had bronchitis and. And Mark Duran's also had a bad cold. Not of course that serious, but yet Mike, the last couple of days it's amazing how much better he even looks and acts and feels. And of course the 70 degree temperature down here makes all of us feel better. Going from Logan to Santa Ana in one week is quite a culture shock, isn't it? Well, I bought all these warm clothes and sweaters and everything else. They're still in the closet. It is amazing how much warmer it is is here and how beautiful it is here in California this time of year with everything so green your team tonight. Any changes in the starting lineup? Well, yes, we've got all of our players that are able to play and some of them won't be able to go as long as we'd like them to go on the floor, but all of them are able to play on our guard line. We will start with Mark Duran and Ricky Henry at the forward line. We'll start with Ave and Jeff and we'll also so center, we're going to start with Grant Stephens. Mark Duran's coming off his finest two games in his career at Dixie College. He seems to have the rhythm down on his shot and playing much better. Oh, he does and he's Trying to turn him away a little bit about worrying about his offense as much and trying to get back to running the team. And we've spent a lot of time together in the last week especially, and he is Mark's intent on winning. And he doesn't really care about his own personal stats as much as he. He does about winning. And that's important to a point guard to be able to do that. In fact, if all four of the other players play extremely well and score well and get the kind of shots and we run the type of tempo that's best for our team to win, of course, that's the responsibility of the point guard, no matter if he scores or doesn't score. But Mark is shooting the ball well and he's handling the ball better and he's playing a little more under control. And I just think that he'll be a better player because of it. No, I think we'll be a better team because of it. Taking a look at this team, we were talking a little bit on the way down. You mentioned that you push, push, push as a coach to get more out of your kids. The kids seem to have hit a little bit of a plateau. Now you change the coaching philosophy just a little bit. Well, I think it's the same types of discipline that all of us face as parents where you push your kids as far as you can go and then eventually have to back away. And if the kid is going to go ahead and do the things, things that you expect them to do, it will be done at that point. If not, it doesn't do any good to push, push, push. All it does is create bad feelings, and that's exactly where we are at this stage. This team is really intent on playing well. They play hard. We've lost some ball games, but not because of lack of effort. Those three games that we've lost this year were our inability to shoot primarily, especially the last two. And of course, we played two of those every one of those ball games without being full strength, without five of our best players on the floor. And I just think that this team has got to settle down now and do the things that they can do best. And each team is a little bit different in what they can do best. And just go ahead and have your leaders take over and be a dominant force. Yes, give them as much leadership and guidance and try to keep them on the right path as you possibly can. But yet it comes back to your athlete at this time. This team is potentially as finest shooting team as you ever have. Now you're just looking for that consistency, right? Well, I think the inconsistency is a thing that really worries every coach when you know you've got a dominant freshman team and really that's what we are. And that's one of the reasons that Mark Durant is back in the lineup, is because he gives us a little more maturity because of his experience of last year. But we are definitely an inconsistent team at this time. You don't know which team is going to really play and that has to do with the youth of our team. I really believe the longer we play and the more games we can get into, the more consistent we will become. The key that you'll be looking for as coach tonight to say the team is putting it together well, I really believe the key for our basketball team. The people in St. George have watched us play an excellent ball game against Brazil. And against Brazil we played outstanding defense and boarded really well. And those are really, really the work aspects of basketball. And if you do rebound well and you do play good defense, the rest of your game really falls into place. Your offense of course comes just because it's there, but yet the other parts of it is where the win, loss comes. That's really the key for us tonight. La Pierce, extremely strong team, an extremely experienced team that's going to take the ball inside with us and do some things and if we can rebound with them and block out and play good defense, I think we have an excellent chance to win. A lot of that defense needs to be away from the basketball. Well, you play defense before your man receives the ball and so yes, it is away from the basketball. Most offenses at the present time are designed to bring the man from off the basketball to the ball with motion types of situations and therefore you have to play all your defense without the basketball. Very little defense is played on the ball other than help recovery, don't let the man have a good shot, that type of stuff. But yet good defense has played away from the basketball. The team tonight, have you sensed the feeling about the kids, how mentally and emotionally prepared they are? I've been impressed with them since we've ever since we got together in Las Vegas. The night before we came down here and had an excellent two hour practice in Clark High School which Ave and Rick are both from and they worked extremely hard. Some of them drove all the way down some Salt Lake and cleared Las Vegas and they had an excellent practice. We came in last night and practiced again and they did a good job and came in this morning and Shot again. I really believe that they're intent on playing well. It's a good attitude with the team. We're not undefeated at this time. We knew we wouldn't be realistically because of the level of competition we play. But I really think we're going to have an excellent chance to win this tournament. Coach Neil Roberts, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thank you. It. 3, 2, 1. Coach Neil Roberts this is going to be pretty good challenge. You got another young team, another good team and you're on their home floor. That's probably the biggest challenge of all is to play Santa Ana. At Santa Ana and yes, they are an impressive basketball team. They've won a lot of ball games. The couple they lost early in the year, evidently they lost four or five there early but one of their players wasn't there and when he wasn't there they lost I think three out of four games. But I was impressed with them last night. It's true. They had a two point victory over a team that was really hot. Hancock shot the ball extremely well and they're big inside, they rebound well. They're an unselfish team and and they shoot the ball well from the perimeter. Both their guards shot the ball extremely well. Dana Patchett, their coach has Santa Ana doing a lot of the things he had hoped to have them do. You mentioned the unselfishness. Well last year, Dana's first year of course, and he had some inherited some players that gave him some problems and wouldn't do the things, the things that he wanted to do. And this year's team are more of the kids that he wanted and the type of players that he wanted. And he's gone from the middle of Los Angeles type of players to more of Orange county, more of his own area. And they play with a lot of pride and I'm sure that they're going to be ready to play us this afternoon. The guard line especially tough. Well I was really impressed with Kelly shot the ball as well as anyone that I've watched this year. Mike Kelly, he has great range, 30 foot stuff and great release on the ball. And when you look at a release on the ball like he has, I question if he's going to have too many off nights. And he shot the ball as well as any of the point guard type of players that we saw in the tournament. Of course some of our players shot the ball really well yesterday as well. But he's a threat and the rather guard, especially the second half shot the ball well. He's A left handed player and is quick and a type of team that is great to play because they play hard, they play intense and they play a lot of players and we're going to have to play well to be in this one. In many ways there is strong parallel between the two teams. Both of you have been in the championship game of this tournament before. Neither team has won the championship before. I wasn't aware that Santa Ana hadn't won the championship before. That's hard to host a tournament and not win it once in while a while. But it says a lot for the field that they draw here. Saddleback's always a good basketball team and they were beaten bad their first ball game. And then the team that we beat last night was I think one of the pre tournament favorites. And so I was extremely pleased with our performance last night. Louisiana Pierce has, I think they were 8 and 3 before we, before we played them and I think they'll probably win this afternoon so they'll keep things going. But they were a well coached basketball team. They were very disciplined. It shows me a lot when a team is down 15 and come back and just do everything they can to win the second half of which they did. And we were fortunate to have had one of our good games. La Pierce talking with people along the sidelines who had seen the team before. They were terribly surprised that La Pierce did not do better against Dixie. And yet on the other hand, they were very impressed with Dixie's defense. Well, I think there's a couple of reasons for it. Our players are really ready to play, they're competitive, they're tough kids. As I've mentioned before, one of the more enjoyable teams I've coached because we might get beat, but these guys are going to do everything they can to win. And from our standpoint as coaches, that's really all we can ask of our players. And they're enjoyable to travel with, they're fun to be around, they're just good people and I think all of St. George can be proud. I know the people here in Los Angeles were impressed with the performance yesterday. Louisiana. Pierce came in here with a great reputation and they were a good team. Big, strong, could shoot the ball and we out hustled them, we outboarded them, we played excellent defense and you have to play good defense against people like that. But a lot of pride last night. I just hope that we have the same zip tonight. A couple of aspects, the bench in the first half, the duo of Roger McDonald and Brant Stevenson, very aggressive at that center position. The best we've had. And between the two of them, if you. And really when you play players of almost equal abilities, different types of players, but equal abilities, you have to almost add their points together and say, our center's got this amount of points. Our forward, if you're trading positions like that, got this. You can't look and say, well, Roger got that and Brent got this. And neither one of them were in double figures. Therefore, we didn't have a good performance because you have to add them together and we're going to use them. In fact, we're starting Roger tonight over Brent. It's not because Brent didn't play well. It's because Brent played a lot of minutes. He played 30 minutes last night. And I just feel like that Roger should have a little more go. And Roger played exceptionally well while he's there. Maybe the best he's played this year. Both of the players, and we've talked about rebounds and about shooting, both of the players clogged passing lanes. They got their hands on the basketball a lot of times defensively, well, for the first time. Well, they have showed signs of this as we've been going through, but consistently through the ball game, for the first time, they didn't play like they were 6, 9. Therefore, people are just supposed to play around them. They'd stand in the middle and do their thing. These guys got out and played the game the way it was meant to be played. And they got in the passing lanes. Roger had his hands on a lot of things. Brent was tipping everything around. Loose balls. They were coming up with them. And it's nice to have the 6, 9 guy there that can when it comes to reach and just pure reach up and get the basketball rather than straight jumping ability. And a lot of rebounds are that because you're bumping against each other, you're knocking each other around. And lots of lot of times it's just the taller guy gets the ball. And they were doing the basic fundamentals. They were pulling the ball down, they were tucking it away. They weren't getting it knocked away. They were clearing the pass and it made it difficult. And I really believe that one of the reasons our defense looked quite good was because they went six, six, six, seven inside and we went the same height plus six, nine. And they had a hard time shooting the ball over the top of us and it bothered their shots. And we were able to front and they weren't able to lob the ball over the top. And we kind of took away their inside game. We mentioned Roger. But Rob Ross, Dave Faldmo came off the bench in that first half and helped give you an extra spot. Well, they did for six minutes. Roger came at the 10 minute mark and stayed until half and then Dave came at. I believe both Dave and Rob came at the six minute mark and we actually extended our lead. They both came in at eight point lead and left with 15. And at the minute 30 left, I called two guards to the sideline and said now we got to make sure we leave this half with at least this 10 point lead and we leave the half with a 15 point lead. In fact, one stage of the ball game, we went into a last shot situation with 33 seconds left and ended up with six more points. So heck of a last shot. Not too often that you could do that. Avery and Parrish, impressive performance last night all the way around. You know Ave will do everything he can to win and improve his game. And he is the type of player that's not afraid to go to the coach and say, what do I need to do? How can I become better and what do you think of this? And I really appreciate that with him. Very personal person. So he's fun to talk to anyway. But he'll come and say, I know that I'm scoring, but how's my defense and how's my rebound? And we've really with him the last couple of weeks, really emphasized the fact that for us to be a good basketball team, not only does he need to get his 20 plus points, but yet he also needs to do the rest. He's passing the ball better than he was early in the year. He's rebounding the ball 12 boards last night against that team was impressive. That puts him in the top two or three rebounders in the tournament. And he did the whole thing. He stole the ball ball again. When it comes to push and shove inside, it's nice having him on our side. He's a pretty good shove and pusher. Well, I'd say right now he probably weighs somewhere between 215 and 220. He's down from the 235 that he came into Dixie College with. But he looks great right now. His girlfriend is disappointed because he's lost some of that. I don't know what you mean by that. I think he feels better about himself to have his weight down because he's a lot quicker and jumps better. And he's changed parts of his game since even since the people in St. George first saw him against the Brazilians in San Juan because he's up higher with these jump shots. He's releasing it quicker. He's going to the hole even quicker than he has done before. He's a better player. He has an amazing ability to change his shot while he's in midair. A hand comes up in front of him, he moves his hand to the side, he arches it at the last moment a little higher to get it over an outstretched arm and amazing ability it is, it's a very difficult thing to do. But when you grow up in the environment that he grew up in, playing basketball against guys that can all jump out of the gym in an environment where you're playing against a lot of ex basketball players that played in college and they all really look to block the shot. You either learn to do that or you just, you know, you've got Wilson stamped on your forehead a lot and he has that unique ability. And when I first saw him shoot the ball I thought, oh, you know, we got to change that and make sure he has a better shot selection. But the longer it went, you realize it wasn't an accident. But it does go in. Hardly ever hits iron. He usually hits nothing but net. Beautiful. It's fun to watch. And when he had it going like he did last night, all aspects of shooting, not just the jump shot, he's taking it to the hole, he's making power moves, he's got great fake inside and I was really impressed and so was everyone else with the way he played. Ricky Henry off with the flu, comes back, has a good game. How much oomphil he have left to. I don't know. That's a good question because he did have a two week period that he didn't even have a chance to play. We worked out a couple of times before we came down here and he was hurting a little bit. His jump shot wasn't there. He was slow, he wasn't jumping the way he was. He actually has lost 17 pounds over the last two and a half weeks. So it's not the Ricky Henry that we all know. But yet it was there last night and he had, he was having fun on the floor. He handled the ball well, he took care of it and he was flying when it mattered. And he got some big rebounds for us. He blocked some shots inside and he's one of the players that we play that 3, 2 zone and it takes Judkins out in the middle of the floor and actually makes him play in a point position. And if you don't have a guard like Ricky that can crash the Board. It's really a weak defense but having him there, he's as fine a rebounder as we have and he actually playing on the guard line and so it enables us to crash and bring him the way we should and he really helps us a great deal. I was really surprised that we were able to play Utah State and BYU as well as we did without him because he adds that much to us. John Judkins talked to him at the pregame meal and he said I concentrated so much on defense, I felt like my rebounding and shooting were down. I got to get that back up tonight. Judkins is a mentally tough young man, isn't he? Well, I'll say he is. You know every good basketball team we've had at Dixie College, I'm talking about our good teams, those that won 29 games and those that won 30 and those that went to the national tournaments. You can look at every one of those basketball teams and say yes, we had a Tom Roberts, we had a Ron Ince, we had a Chris McMullen, we had a Brent Wade and we had the tough players. I think a great example of of the want to play was Eddie Benson that almost lost his life in an automobile accident and was playing six weeks later and you know, very tough, mentally tough, physically tough basketball players. I look back at the team that took third in nation and some of those players, well, Ron Ince was still there and Craig Hammer was a heck of a basketball player and Ricky Williams and Mike Slocum and Slaymaker and Johnny Gilbert and all those guys and Kim Garrett probably as tough apart players we've had. And this basketball team has some mentally and physically tough players. Abe is tough. He's not afraid to take the shot when it matters. He's not hesitant, he's going to take charge. John Judkins maybe the leader in this respect. He is a tough kid. He'll do what he has to do to win. And like it or not, we can talk about all the finesse and we can talk about the great jumpers and the great jump shot shooters. But that's still maybe the most important aspect of basketball. Now let's turn to Santa Ana tonight. The key for Dixie to beat this Dons team. Well first of all we've got to shut down their outside shooting with three players. I really think Mike Kelly, which has shot the ball extremely well last night, he goes 8 for 14, but they're all from a long ways away, had 16 points and was their leading scorer Chuck Lewis, he only went 4 for 11, but. But he missed all of his shots early in the ball game when it got to win loss time. Chuck Lewis, their other guard, number 12, really did score well and got some big baskets for him. He had foul trouble in the first half too. That was part of that. Well, I'm sure that when you're sitting down you don't score so well. And then also Rich Thomas, which has been their leader this year, he went 3 for 7, which isn't great shooting, but he had six boards and he had eight assists. He handles the ball a lot. He had eight points and made some big baskets one day when it matters. And he's a big concern because he played last night and they didn't really play well. And he's had some 30 point plus games this year and if he breaks out of that and shoots it, they're going to be tough to handle. I think the key for us is now they're pretty good size inside. Not only tall kids, my gosh, they got kids out there, 235 and 220 and big, strong weightlifter type players where they got the big arms and shoulders. And he said the one, one kid that's that big came in at 250 and he's got him down to 235 and he will take him on down further. But we're going to have to battle it. We're going to have to rebound with those three players. I think the best rebound team in the tournament, maybe next to us, but an excellent rebound team. We're going to have to battle inside and keep a hand of the shooters.