He’s Craft-y, he’s got no gripe, he’s Craft-y, and he’s just your type! 2 Sundays ago Gardner-Webb beat Radford 76-65 on the road in the Big South tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to this week’s NCAA tournament. The Runnin’ Bulldogs appeared to be runnin’ on empty after starting conference play with a 2-4 record but bounced back to win 11 of their final 13 games and claim the 1st NCAA tourney appearance in school history. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with Coach Craft about DJ Laster’s heroic title game performance and what it feels like to make the NCAA tourney for the very 1st time.
You went to college at Florida: what is your favorite memory of those old Billy Donovan teams? I was actually a baseball manager but was certainly a basketball fan as well. I graduated in 2000, which was the year that they went to the title game with guys like Mike Miller/Udonis Haslem before losing to Michigan State.
In 2013 you were named head coach at Gardner-Webb: why did you take the job? I had been an assistant here from 2004-2007 and really thought that it was a special place. I felt a great care and family dynamic here on our campus. It is a Christian school and their values line up with the way I want to live my life. I also thought that we could be successful in basketball.
In the 2015 CBI you had a 9-PT loss at Colorado: what is the biggest difference between the regular season and the postseason? I do not have a lot of postseason experience but it is just survive and advance. If you want to keep playing you have to keep winning so the stakes are higher and there is more pressure on everything that you do.
Last year you lost 18 games: when did you 1st get the sense that you could turn things around this year? Last year was the worst year that we have had during our 5 years here but we were 9-9 in the league and felt that we had a decent team. We had 6 losses that were 1-possession games in the final 2 minutes so we put an emphasis in the off-season on having a small margin for error. We struggled a little bit early before winning 8 of our last 9.
You began this season with 2 straight games against fellow NCAA tourney teams in VCU/Virginia Tech: which of them impressed you the most, and why? Both of them were really good and put a lot of pressure on us defensively. We had a high rate of turnovers in both games but Virginia Tech just exploded in the 2nd half. Offensively the Hokies were pretty healthy and were also hard for us to score on.
You also had consecutive road wins in December at Georgia Tech/Wake Forest: do you think that you might have 1 more ACC win left in you this week?! We sure hope so! I think that Virginia is a different animal and are 1 of the best teams in the country. Their efficiency is off the charts and it will be a hard task but we will prepare to play our best.
You turned 42 last month: what did you do for the big day? I do not really remember. At this point in the season every day feels the same: it is like Groundhog Day!
Last Sunday DJ Laster scored a career-high 32 PTS in 32 minutes in an 11-PT win at Radford en route to being named conference tourney MVP: how was he able to play the best when it mattered the most? He has really been playing with a lot of confidence and working on his game every day. He had a couple of really good weeks to finish the regular season and played well in all 3 of our conference tourney games. He was playing at another level in the title game and was able to take advantage of some mismatches from an athleticism standpoint. We sure needed every 1 of his buckets and I am glad that he came up big for us.
What did it mean to you to win a title, and what has the reaction been like since returning to campus? It means a lot for my players/staff because they have all worked so hard to accomplish this, but it means even more to our university/students/alumni. It will give us some national exposure and our former players have loved it. We had a packed student center last night and it has been fun for the whole community to watch us make the NCAA tourney for the 1st time in school history.