Quotes From Head Basketball Coach Stew Morrill

On playing against UC Riverside's freshman Nate Carter...

"He's impressive, I'll say that up front. He's a tough cover and tough to guard because he posts up a great deal. It's kind of who you put on him. If you put your four-man on him, like some people have done, then he goes out on the perimeter and takes you off the dribble and shoots threes. If you put your three-guy on him, he's about 6 foot 7 and he posts you up a lot and gives you problems there. They run their offense with this in mind, whoever you put on him they are going to try and capitalize on it. He's a very good post-up player and an adequate three-point shooter and he's very good off the dribble-drive. We've got our hands full trying to defend him. He makes scoring look easy and he's near the top of the league in rebounding. We certainly have a challenge there. And they have other players too. They are on an upswing right now. They got a road win against Fullerton and now they're coming in here playing better basketball then they were three or four weeks ago. I think it's because they had some home games and then got a win on the road."

"They are a hard team to prepare for because they run a ton of motion. They play a lot off of how you defend them and that's a lot of what motion is. It's hard to prepare for because they are reacting to what the defense does and it's hard to get a scout squad to do that, when they don't play motion everyday. So it's difficult for us in our preparation, but we'll try and get ready."

"I don't think they believe that he is the only one that is going to win for them. They have quite a few guys back from last year's team as well. John Galbreath is a really good passer. He's a really clever, skilled four-man. Aaron Hands is back from last year. Their point guard Kevin Butler is an outstanding athlete. It's not like they have all these guys that have never played and they have this spectacular freshman. No, they have all these guys that have played and now they have added a spectacular freshman. Riverside is figuring out that they are pretty good, and they are."

"I don't know. The other guys are more experienced. We haven't see them in person yet, we'll have to see. They sure look to be very solid. They play kind of our match-up type zone. Their man defense is really solid. They run a really good motion."

"I expect them to be at full strength and they are going to come in here and run time. I expect them to have all their guys because that's how you need to prepare. You don't want to make any mistakes. You just got to count on them bringing all their guys in here and making every possession valuable because they are going to run some time, that's just the way they have been playing."

"We have watched Fullerton prepare against different league teams and their talent level has been impressive. It's just a question of who they are going to have. But they are very capable."

On fans looking at these games as a little easier...

"That's not a smart thing to do. Let's put it this way: the intelligent basketball fans in Cache Valley won't do that. And that's about 90 percent of our fans I hope."

"I think the only way you can judge yourself is to measure where you were to where you are now. I think we have taken some steps to get better. You look at the last couple of weeks. We played really well at home, went to Irvine and had a chance to win against one of the top teams in our league. I think we are getting better offensively."

"Certainly, we have our limitations. Somebody said to me after a game that we aren't as physical or big as we used to be and he's right. We have a different kind of team along those lines and we have to make up for it in other ways. We have some hard match-ups because we don't have a dominate-size post guy. In the past when we had Dimitri Jorssen, Jeremy Vague and Shawn Daniels we were very physical and strong. That's not the makeup of our team right now. I don't say that in a bad way, that's just a reality. The makeup of our team is different than it has been, which is challenging in some ways to utilize the talents of the team when it's different. And we try to do that by isolating Spencer Nelson and getting him to the line and having him take people off the dribble and doing some of the things that he can do."