by TheShow23 » Wed Dec 24, 2014 11:24 pm
[font="Times New Roman"][SIZE="3"]"Good afternoon, everybody and thank you so much for joining us today. This is an exciting day for our men's basketball program and I'm so happy to look out here and see so many people, so many alum, so many people that bleed Maroon and care about our men's basketball program. Thank you for being here. There are a lot of characteristics that you look at when you are selecting the next leader of your basketball program. There are core elements here that go without question; integrity, competitiveness, the ability to coach and recruit. Beyond that Steve Smith brings those four elements that make me very excited to have him leading our program.”
"One week ago today, we officially began the search process to find a new head basketball coach. I had many questions, good questions, on that day from a variety of the media that cover us on a regular basis and even some national media- what's the profile, what are you looking for?”
"I'm happy to tell you that Steve Smith fits the profile perfectly. You'll remember some of these profile points I made. We needed to hire somebody that was a teacher, somebody that had system which would excite the fan base. Most importantly we needed someone with experience in the CAA to ease our transition into our new conference. Coach Smith has played and work in the CAA as a coach. If you look his time in the CAA as a player and coach, and look where his teams finished that season, you'll see a lot of ones and twos.”
"He has boundless energy, one of those common traits I see in a lot of our coaches. When you get to know Steve, you will see what I'm talking about. He's a grinder. He's enthusiastic. He loves people. He loves to be around people. Great sense of humor, as a matter of fact, early in our conversation, when we got to next year's schedule, he reached his hand out and said, 'Nice to meet you Joe. I hope our paths will cross again."
"He's a communicator, great communicator. He will embrace our constituents and he will do that willingly and do that because he loves to be around people who care about the College of Charleston “
"His ability to connect with people, connect with players, connect with recruits, as I say, 'see the big picture on our campus and appreciate being a part of our university. "He has a very genuine priority on academic success. Again, I don't think we could have found anyone who fits this profile better than the man I'm about to introduce to you, our new men's head basketball coach, Steve Smith."
"I have to start off by saying how honored I am to stand here as the new head basketball coach at the College of Charleston.”
"I must thank President Glenn McConnell for this opportunity, AD Joe Hull, who I've just hit it off with and look so much forward to working with. They were a big part of my decision to come here to Charleston. I certainly want to thank them for this opportunity.”
“I have unbelievable appreciation for the players and coaches that have created the unbelievable tradition here at the College of Charleston. If you look at all of the regimes, from back to John Kresse, Tom Herrion, Bobby Cremins and the great players - some of who might be here - that tradition is unbelievably impressive. As a coach, the only thing you are trying to do is you are trying to look at where they have been successful. The next step is I sat down with some members of the faculty and you hear them talk about the College of Charleston and these things all resonate in my mind that this place is just the ideal fit for me. It is everything that I want. Everything I want in a community, everything I want in a school. You can hear the passion in their voice when they talk about Charleston, not just our basketball. It just became so clear that this is just the ideal fit for me. The process for me went to the next step. I got the chance to get up here yesterday right off the plane and meet with our players. I told the players our program is going to be about two things every single day. Number one is identity and the other is development. I told them exactly what I am going to do to create an identity.”
"I want to thank some very important people in my life that have helped to get me to the point I am in my career. Jeff Capel, who gave me my first chance in Division I basketball at Oklahoma as an graduate assistant. Shaka Smart, my boss and at VCU. Those two guys have been great mentors to me.”
"Now some of you, I'm sure, have heard that rumor that maybe I was the second, third, fourth, or fifth choice for this job. I don't know. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn't. Roy Williams was like the tenth choice at Kansas and it worked out pretty well for him.”
"Our style of play, which I am sure we will have some questions about that, but it is an aggressive, attacking type of basketball. We full court press on every made basket and dead ball. We get after people form end line to end line. We fall back to an aggressive man to man defense. I learned Havoc from the master and that is what I intend to bring here. We are going to play aggressive, attacking defensive style of play. Offensively, we are going to push the basketball on misses and long rebounds. In the half-court we are going to run a hybrid offense which combines elements of the dribble drive offense, the Princeton offense, and a motion offense. We want guards who can attack and who can shoot, in terms of the bigs we are looking for versatile players who can do a variety of things in our offense.”
"Recruiting wise - we are going to recruit the best fits for our program. I could care less whether they are a 5 star or 1 star recruit. We will never-ever walk into a gym and take second fiddle or be okay with finishing second on anyone we recruit. When we walk in with that Cougars shirt on our chest, people are going to say, `Oh boy, here comes Steve and his crew, we better lace them up,' because we are going to compete everyday relentlessly on the recruiting trail. We have to start that right here in our home state and will use my connections to recruit in the Mid-Atlantic region as well.”
"We have a great university to sell. We will do everything in our power as a staff to make sure we get the players needed to move us forward as a program. But most importantly, we have the best fan base in college basketball. And because of you fans, young people are going to want to come to our school and they are going to want to play in front of you.”
"Thank you very much. I am excited to be your head coach and if you have any questions at this time I will be happy to answer them."
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