FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The Nova Southeastern men's basketball team (5-4, 1-0 SSC) returns to Sunshine State Conference play Saturday to face the Eckerd Tritons (7-3, 1-0 SSC) in St. Petersburg, Fla. at 4 p.m. The game will broadcast live on 640 Sports. NSUSharks.com sat down with head coach
Gary Tuell to discuss the current state of the Sharks and their matchup with the Tritons.
Q: The team took a mandated break for the holiday but recently returned to practice. How has practice been the last few days and what has been the team's mentality after the break? A: The break was probably good for us. For one thing, we went into the break coming off a 24-point win over the 18
th ranked team in the country (Missouri-Saint Louis). So everyone went home feeling a little better about the team after that. Our first three days after the break we had three days of 'two-a-day' practices which were beneficial. We made some adjustments to what we were doing at both ends of the floor, which were necessitated by the loss of Casey and Nick. The team's spirit has been high. They're excited about the conference race and I think they're excited about some of the changes we've made.
Q: Your weight loss challenge with the Sharks has been well documented on NSUSharks.com. Did you stay on the wagon through the holidays? A: The holidays were tough on my diet. I definitely did not drop any weight in the week we were off. But I think I've maintained. I am back on course. I spit out anything that tastes good. We have nine or ten weeks left in the regular season so hopefully I can drop 10 to 20 pounds over that period.
Q: Eckerd is off to a good start at 7-3 and 1-0 in the conference. In the past, they've had big, athletic guys who could overwhelm smaller teams. Is that still their MO this season? A: As long as Tommy Ryan is coaching at Eckerd they will be a physical, defensive-minded team that tests your manhood and does whatever it can to pound you in the paint and on the glass. They have three of their top post players back from a year ago (Ray Darnell, 6-6 and 250; Malcolm Brunner, 6-6, 200; and Brian Cobb, 6-6 and 220) a transfer from the University of Florida football team (Trevon Young, 6-5 and 260) and if they want to play with a smaller lineup they move Jerrick Stevenson, one of the best athletes in our league (6-5 and 210) from the small forward to the power forward position without losing anything on either end of the court. As a group, those guys would make a heckuva defensive line for a lot of college football teams. But they are very good basketball players who do their jobs extremely well. We have to go in there and compete against them with two guys (
Brian Cahill [Sr., Arlington, Va.] and
Justin Jeangerard [Sr., Weaverville, Calif.]) who have bad backs and are giving up a ton of size to them.
We could really use Nick Rosa and Casey Carroll in this game, but that's going to be true most every time we line up this year. The SSC is loaded with teams that have size and athletes on the front line. You can't go to sleep on Eckerd's guards because they are very good, too. They try to wear you out inside and force you to deal with all that beef in the paint. Once they get you sucked in to stop or at least try to stop the big guys, their guards do a great job of spacing the floor and knocking down open shots. You pick your poison when defending Eckerd. If you can match up with them inside it makes it a little easier to defend them on the perimeter, but if you're as small as we are you have to give up something. We can't defend them one-on-one.
Q: Eckerd hasn't been kind to NSU over the last couple of years. The Sharks have had their season end at the hands of the Tritons for two straight seasons. Have those memories affected the team's training in any way this week, or is that completely in the rear view mirror? A: I think we split with them in the regular season each of the past two years, which is a lot better than we were doing with them before that when they pretty much had their way with us physically and mentally. Losing to them in the conference tournament the past two years was disappointing because we lost both of those games in the second half when they just wore us down. Last year was especially tough because we really only had five guys who played and were without Casey Carroll, who injured his back in our first round win over Rollins. Our tank was empty and we had nothing left in the second half of that game. We played the last 20 minutes on fumes, which was painful because I thought our kids deserved a better fate. They gave it everything they had, but Eckerd was deeper, stronger and better on that day and deserved to win.
It doesn't matter who knocks you out of the tourney to end your season. No matter who it is, you're disappointed and depressed when the season ends. We haven't circled this game on the calendar or anything like that. Every team in this league is good and every one of them will treat you unkindly if they have the chance. We've just tried to work on improving what we do this week. We're preparing our team for February, thinking long-term and not short-term. We have a lot of adjustments to make and a lot of teaching to do over the next few weeks to get these guys where we need to be as a team now that we're playing without much inside depth. This game is important because it's a conference game, but it's no more important than any of the other 15 league games.
Q: The Tritons have allowed their 10 opponents this year to shoot over 40% from 3-point range this year. Will the Sharks look to test their perimeter defense early? A: Heck, we shoot the three as often as we can, whenever we can. Despite the start to their season, Eckerd is traditionally one of the best teams in our league at taking away the 3-point shot. Every team we play has one thing in mind: don't let NSU shoot the three. Lynn does it better than anybody, with their pressure and their athletes, but Eckerd is right there with Lynn and Saint Leo and Florida Southern when it comes to defending the 3 ball. When you look at our team, it's obvious you have to game plan to take away the 3-point shot because we don't have much chance to score on people in the paint. We're pretty easy to game plan for. Defend the 3. And when you finish doing that… defend the 3 some more.
People aren't quivering in their boots about our low post game, and without Casey Carroll and Nick Rosa, we lose two of our most effective inside scorers, so why would you worry about defending us inside? What concerns me most right now is not how people defend us, but how well a couple of our seniors –
Stian Berg (Baerum, Norway) and
Maurice Fuller (Westfield, Ind.) – are not shooting the ball. They're nowhere close to being the offensive threats they were a year ago and we desperately need to get them going somehow, some way. Justin Jeangerard has also been very inconsistent from the perimeter. When we shoot well we can compete. When we don't, we don't really have enough firepower inside to compete. That's not a secret. Everyone knows that.
Q: After Saturday, NSU travels to Lynn, who are receiving national votes, before hosting No. 2 Florida Southern. Then its three straight road games. A weak-minded team could see their season collapse over the next couple of weeks. Are the Sharks up to the task? A: We open the semester with five of our first six on the road, with league-favorite Florida Southern our only home game in that stretch. It's brutal. The league didn't do us any favors when it put together this schedule. We've seen Tampa, who is very good, and now we get Eckerd, Lynn, Florida Southern and Barry and I would argue that those are the four best teams in the league based on the way they've played before Christmas. The good thing is the road games we have in January will be home games in February, which gives us a chance to finish strong and maybe make up some ground down the stretch. Of course, if you can go on the road and win these tough early-season games it puts you in pretty good shape in the league.
Our mindset won't change depending on the outcome of any game. We were embarrassed by two very good teams, Midwestern State and West Texas A&M, at home, before the Christmas break. But we didn't hang our heads or cry about it. No one pointed fingers or laid blame on anyone. Our locker room is together. That's why these guys responded against Missouri-Saint Louis with one of their best efforts of the year (an 82-58 victory on Dec. 21 against a top 20 opponent). When we compete with maximum effort on the defensive end and share the ball on the offensive end, we're a good team. We don't sit around saying we want to be Florida Southern or Eckerd or Barry or anyone else. We like who we are and we think we're good enough to be in the conversation. You're going to get beat in this league. It's a tough fight every night. No one in this league lost its most versatile player to injury or lost a promising, talented young freshman… but we did. So what? We move on. We take who we have and we mold them into the best that we can be, whatever that is. We believe in what we're doing and we believe in ourselves and losing games in this league – especially early in January – is not going to change how we go about our business or what we're ultimately trying to accomplish.
Regardless of results we'll be a better team in February than we are in January. I think most teams can say that. The question is will we be good enough at the end of the year to make the tournament and have a chance to compete for the conference championship? Maybe losing Casey and Nick will prevent us from doing that, but it doesn't have to, and you'll never convince our players or coaches that it will. We know we have to improve our consistency and our effort to be a really good team. We know every team in this league has an advantage on us at every position in terms of athleticism. We're the least athletic team in our league and by a long shot. So what? I wouldn't trade my team for any team in this league. I wouldn't want to coach anybody else's team. I love my team and I love my guys. I believe in them and I believe they can get where they want to go if they're willing to put in the effort. Nothing that happens in the next six games will change that.
