bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the past four games? You had the loss to New Mexico and then the win against Oklahoma Panhandle State, then the loss at Cal State-Fullerton and then the win against North Carolina A&T.
Marvin Menzies: The reality that you're not where you'd like to be at this stage of the year has hit us with the three losses that we have. But understanding and being in the business for some time that each season is like a lifetime, we just keep working to get better. We'd like to have a different record now but I'm happy with the progress that we're making even though we took the loss at Fullerton, I've felt like since the UNM game we've improved in different areas. We have a lot of work to do to get even better but I have seen some improvement.

bc.net: What's been the biggest improvement that you've seen that you're the most happy with?
MM: I think that we're starting to play better man to man defense in the half[court]. We've still got some loose ends that we need to tie up in our pressing but I like the focus in the half at times. The game slippage is always going to be there but I feel like we're playing exponentially better than we did in the first two games of the season.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the season opener on Friday night against St. Mary's. If someone had told you that Hamidu would score 22 points and their big man Samhan would foul out with five minutes left in the game, you probably would have thought your team would be on the winning side of things.
Marvin Menzies: Yeah, that was the only bright side of the whole game. There were a lot of components that led to such a horrible start to the season but Hamidu's play was the silver lining to it all.

bc.net: What are some of the adjustments that your team needs to make before they take the court again tomorrow?
MM: The adjustments are simple. They're things we've been working every day since we started. They just didn't execute them at all, defensively or offensively. The only adjustment is to go out and play like we've been practicing and not like we're a deer in the headlights.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in-season interviews with Aggie head men's basketball coach Marvin Menzies as the Aggies take aim at a WAC Championship in the 2009-2010 season and a return to the NCAA Tournament. This week we talked with Coach Menzies about how practices have been in the early going and the season opener against St. Mary's (CA).

bleedCrimson.net: How have your practices been going and how have your new players been performing in practice?
Marvin Menzies: I'm pretty happy with the way practices have been going. The focus and attention to detail has been good. There's an obvious high level of concentration in our practice with the returners and the expected mental breakdowns with the freshmen but even for freshmen they've been pretty solid. We've got a nice little mix of guys from an experience standpoint as well as new pieces to the puzzle that we think will help to compliment the returners as well as take over as years go by as we try to build this basketball team into a true basketball program instead of having to rely on instant help. The development of players both academically and athletically on and off the court, we're heading in that direction and we're starting to see it unfold. We're optimistic about the season in front of us and our chances to be competitive every game and have an opportunity to hopefully be in the upper echelon of the conference. We've got to worry about the games in front of us right now and we're taking them one at a time and right now we're focused on St. Mary's.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. We talked with Coach Menzies about the semifinal loss to Utah State, the growth of the team over the season, what he's most proud of this season and his prediction for the NCAA Tournament winner.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the Utah State game?
Marvin Menzies: Obviously that was a big time environment, a great effort by the young kids to jump out on Utah State like that and give us an early lead. We just couldn't hold on long enough, we had them all the way down to the last couple seconds there, one more stop and we'd have got it done. But they had a very good player make a big time shot under pressure. One of our guys lost him in a bit of confusion there but we had plenty of chances with Hernst going to the line, Gordo's missed three, we had plenty of chances in the last couple of minutes to secure it. It's one of those things, you wish you could have it back but at the same time I was really proud of the way the guys fought and played against a quality team.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. We talked with Coach Menzies about the quarterfinal victory over Boise State and the semifinal matchup against Utah State.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the game and your outstanding defensive effort.
Marvin Menzies: I was really happy with the way they played from the scouting perspective. I think they had a full understanding of what our strategy was going to be going into the game and I think we did an excellent job of executing the scouting report and they've shown they've grown up a lot in terms of being able to do that. That's really tricky and it takes freshmen a little while to do it. They took a big step in that area today.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. This week talked with Coach Menzies about the road victory at Hawai'i, the first round matchup and team preparation for playing a noon game.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the game against Hawai'i this past Saturday. I thought you generated about as much momentum as you possibly could out of that game heading into the WAC tournament this week.
Marvin Menzies: Yeah, I would agree. We went to the island and basically had a plan in place to prepare the guys in the way of a business trip in terms of understanding exactly what we were there to achieve and having a purpose to the schedule that was conducive to that and it went well. Obviously we got the result we wanted and hopefully that'll propel us into the type of play we need to have in order to be competitive and win on Thursday.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. This week talked with Coach Menzies about the losses to Louisiana Tech and Boise State, the regular season finale against Hawai'i and the media's definition of parity versus mediocrity.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the games against La. Tech and Boise State?
Marvin Menzies: Both of them obviously were games that could have positioned us to be fighting for second. The first game against La. Tech it was real disappointing to not go in there and play better. But then after we watched the tape and looked at it, actually La. Tech played really well and defensively took us out of our flow and we didn't do a good job adjusting. You have to credit them for how well they played and how well they shot the ball. I think they were 8-13 from three. That was just a road loss, it's one of those where you lick your wounds but you've gotta get back up on your horse for Boise at home playing your last game, the whiteout. I was optimistic the guys were going to play well and we did offensively, we scored 92 points and shot 50% from the field but we didn't do near as good a job as we need to do at this point of the season defensively and ended up giving up 104 points and just really said, hey we're going to run with them, that's the style of play we wanted to do but we were trying to get them to not score as high a clip as they did. They played really well also. Coach Graham said it was their first or second best performance of the year. You hope that you could try to disable a team at home like that, the last time on your home floor but that wasn't the case. Since then we've refocused and tried to get our heads on point for this final conference game and there's still a lot of scenarios going into the WAC tournament as to who we're going to match up against. We've got to take care of our business and play well tomorrow.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. This week talked with Coach Menzies about the victory over Louisiana Tech and Cal-State Fullerton, the rematches with Louisiana Tech and Boise State and who the best individual player the Aggies have faced this season is.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the first Louisiana Tech meeting last Monday?
Marvin Menzies: That was a battle. I think having the opportunity to be up big late and have them keep fighting as they did was a good opportunity for us to learn a lot without taking an 'L'. I think we did because then we came back against Fullerton and had almost the same scenario and made good decisions and made free throws and concentrated and did smart things in terms of our execution down the stretch. It was a good lesson learned.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. This week talked with Coach Menzies about the split against Utah State and Nevada, Hamidu and Wendell and the upcoming games against Fresno State and Louisiana Tech.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the Utah State game?
Marvin Menzies: Utah State was a tough one. That was one of those games, it was such a great opportunity, they had just broke into the Top 25 so you're hopeful that you go in and pull off the upset and take one of those golden opportunities and perhaps use it to grow your program. Unfortunately we weren't able to get the job done. We played a very solid first half, we started off a little slow but we showed a lot of heart and fought back and did some good things there in the first half to be down only three with them making seven threes in the first half. I thought that was pretty admirable for my guys. Eventually they wore us down there in the second half and we didn't have the same level of execution, credit their defense for taking us out of our comfort zone. As a result we didn't get the job done out there.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be interviewing Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at their third consecutive WAC championship. This week talked with Coach Menzies about the home sweep of San Jose State and Hawai'i, the Bracketbusters matchup, Gordo Castillo and the upcoming road trip against Utah State and Nevada.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the San Jose State game?
Marvin Menzies: I was a little worried about that one coming in. I knew their team was going to come in hard having lost at home in a close game, in a game they felt they could have won. Then obviously it was going to be one of those deals where you've got to make sure your guys are ready to play. I think we showed that, we responded. I was happy to see our guys had a lot of energy and came out with some passion and got the job done.  Continue Reading This Post >>