March 13, 2011

UNLV NCAA Tournament Announcement Press Conference
March 13, 2011

Head Coach Lon Kruger Opening Statement…
Anytime you see your name announced up there you feel pretty good about that. These guys are very deserving to be playing in the tournament, they're excited about that, we're excited for them, and for our fans and everyone involved. Illinois has a great tradition an outstanding team and we look forward to traveling to Tulsa to play them on Friday.

Kruger on the third draw in a row of being in 8/9 game and having Kansas on the other side…
We hope to have the opportunity to play Kansas. Of course that would mean we win the first one. We have to take care of that. That's all these guys are going to think about - that first game. You know that as an 8 or 9 you're going to get a tough opponent in the second round and certainly Kansas is very tough, very good. But we're not concerned with that, we just hope to have that opportunity.

Kruger on feeling if UNLV had played its way off the 8/9 seed…
I'm biased of course, I would have thought so, but everyone has their opinion. I thought we moved off of that with a strong finish and playing good basketball late and no real bad losses, considering everyone we had lost to is playing in the NCAA Tournament except Colorado State. These guys had done a really good job to regroup and finish the way they have, playing their best basketball right now and we look forward to playing even better next week.

Kruger on the tournament committee's view of UNLV not being as high as anticipated…
Hard to say. Six of your eight losses are top six (seed) teams. The thing is we don't have time to worry about that too much. It's hard to make a case one way or another, but all those things considered, plus winning nine out of the last 11 or whatever it was for us, our strength of schedule is good, RPI is good. But again, we aren't going to worry too much about that now.

Kruger on how a No. 1 seed can lose early in the tournament, referencing Kansas' loss to Northern Iowa last season…
Our guys are certainly aware, having been there last year; our guys know that anything is possible. Again, that is for Saturday's talk. We have a lot of work to do in preparation for a tough Big 10 club in Illinois. But our guys are aware that it is a possibility.

Kruger on his history with Illinois…
We have a lot of good friends in Champagne, Chicago, the Illinois area. They have a great basketball tradition, very good fans. We'll see a lot of people we haven't seen in awhile and that will be good, but right now we're concerned with the Illini team, and we know how good they are. They probably had some games where they played great, and some where they were a little disappointed in the result, but in the first round of the NCAA tournament you expect everyone to play their best.

Anthony Marshall on playing in the NCAA Tournament with a team with experience…
We just have to go in there right from the beginning and play instead of feeling our way through the first half and working out those jitters of playing in the NCAA tournament for the first time. We're a more mature team this year than last year and have some veteran guys that have been playing for awhile. We just have to go in there and play our best basketball for 40 minutes.

Marshall on UNLV getting the No. 8 seed and possibility of playing No. 1 Kansas in the second round…
We're not disappointed at all. We're very excited to be playing in the tournament. We worked hard to get here and are just looking forward to the challenge. We're taking it one game at a time and will use the next couple days to get better in practice. We are just looking forward to taking on the challenge of playing Illinois.

Chace Stanback on being in the 8/9 game…
We are fortunate just to be in the tournament and right now we just need to keep working on what we've been doing and prepare for Illinois.