Bryant’s Tim O’Shea On The Bulldogs, Mike Rice & The Final Four
Saturday, April 06, 2013
We have heard from URI’s Dan Hurley and Brown’s Mike Martin, today we caught up with Bryant Bulldogs coach Tim O’Shea down in Atlanta where he is attending this weekend’s Final Four. O’Shea talked to GoLocalProv.com about everything from his team to this weekend’s Final Four and the Mike Rice firing at Rutgers.
On the Mike Rice controversy at Rutgers:
“I was an acquaintance of his when he coached in the league at Robert Morris and always thought he was a nice guy. He always treated me well and his teams played very hard. To see what has happened is very unfortunate and I have talked to a lot of fellow coaches about it down here and none of us can relate to it. I mean, I played for some tough coaches but no one ever did anything like that. Even a guy like Gary Williams (at Boston College) used to kick a ball into the stands when he got angry but never at a player. The tough part is that the guy is 44 and has a family. What’s he going to do now? As I said, it’s unfortunate.”
On Bryant’s very successful season:
“I’ve told you before that our whole goal was to be competitive in our first year of full eligibility at the division one level which was easier said than done. In the first few years, you’re not playing for anything, you know that your season is going to end on a certain date. But we were able to develop some good players as senior, add in some transfers, we too the preseason trip to Europe and it all came together. Had we beaten Robert Morris, which was a pretty close game, we would have been the #1-seed in our conference and made it to the NIT. But I’m proud of what we accomplished. We essentially almost started the program from scratch and were ranked in the mid-major poll for 7 or 8 weeks this year. Beating Lehigh and Boston College certainly helped.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTOn what next year’s team will look like:
“Since we lose Frankie (Dobbs), we need to figure out the point guard position. We have 3 candidates that I like. Shane McLaughlin was a freshman that played for us this year. Declan Soukup is a redshirt freshman from Australia and we have a good recruit coming in named Justin Brickman who is Jason’s (LIU) younger brother. If that position works out, we should be pretty good. The toughest thing for us is our non-league schedule. We’ll play at Gonzaga, Ohio State and Notre Dame and have home games against North Dakota State, Vermont and Lehigh. We have 9 teams on our schedule next year that played in the postseason this year.”
On being at the Final Four:
“I had dinner last night with Andy Katz (ESPN) and Craig Robinson (Oregon State). Craig and I talked a lot about our last game when he was at Brown and they came out to Ohio and played us at the CBI. It was a lot of fun.”
On this year’s Final Four teams:
“I’m kind of casual about the actual games themselves but I do think that Louisville has the best team. Syracuse has what it takes to win it. I do think that zone defense in domed stadiums like this gives teams even more problems because it’s a tough shooting background where teams struggle to shoot. I wouldn’t count out a team like Michigan. Sometimes you see a team that pulls out a game they should have lost like they did against Kansas and that’s all you need to go on a roll.”
On why he didn’t even mention fellow mid-major Wichita State?:
“Wichita State, a mid-major? Their coach makes over a million dollars, they play in a 15,000-seat arena. They’re not exactly my definition of a mid-major. We hear that phrase all the time but a lot of those programs aren’t mid-majors like VCU. They’re not a mid-major. Now, if a team like Bucknell were here, sure, I’d say that they are a mid-major.”
