March 17, 2009
Head Coach Brian Smith:
Opening Statement:
"We leave tomorrow for NCAA's and we're ready. That's pretty much it. We've had about 10 days of practice since Big 12's and we're prepared. The brackets come out tonight so we're going to start preparing more as a coaching staff video wise. Seeding wise it will be good. We should have six guys seeded in the top six. We'll wait until the brackets come out but I feel good about our seeds. It's probably the highest seeds I have ever brought to the National tournament. It's good to get away from the conference for a day. That will be a good thing on Thursday, but we'll be prepared. Watching Nebraska and how they performed at home for Big 12's, I told these guys, now we're at home. Scottrade is our home building now. I think we've sold over 1,100 tickets in our section. We're going to have the emotion and the crowd behind us now."
On the advantage of having eight wrestlers in the tournament:
"The more wrestlers you have the better chance you have of scoring more points. That's obvious, but I'd love to have all 10. These are 33 man brackets, there are a lot of people out there from different conferences. The Big 12 is the most dominant, we have 84 percent of our conference qualifying for NCAA. I tell my guys all the time that you have to have sort of an attitude when you walk out there in front of a Big 12 school, and Missouri is one of them. We've done a good job preparing our guys and developing that attitude that when we step out on the mat we can beat all these people.
On expectations for high seeded Missouri wrestlers:
"I just expect them to go out and wrestle hard in their first match. That's all we're worrying about right now. You hear people talking about basketball brackets and who's going to match up...I was talking to a high school coach the other day and he said he would hand out an empty bracket to his team with just their match on it. I wish kids would do that. Focus on the first thing as what you can control because that's what matters. A lot of people get caught up in who you can wrestle and half the time they don't even end up there. You have to worry about yourself and what you can control. I think this team does a good job of that, that's the consistency of these six guys with the seeds. And the other two, they have to go out there and score some points. You never know what can happen in a national tournament. There have been plenty of unseeded guys who have become All-Americans.
On things that will change once brackets are released:
"Nothing. They just need to keep doing what they're doing. We won't focus on the opponent that much because you really can't. They have to go out and do what they do best and what they've been ding consistently all season."