BIG EAST Tournament

The things coaches say (and maybe shouldn’t)

 The games from day two settled the quarterfinal match-ups. First game of the day is the big ticket game with #9 Connecticut taking on the #1 seeded Syracuse. Then #5 Georgetown take on #4 Cincinnati, #7 Louisville challenges #2 Marquette and finally #3 Notre Dame plays against USF.

But before the grand masters of BIG EAST coaches get their game on, UConn’s Jim Calhoun spoke about the end of the BIG EAST line for West Virginia on the day it was announced that Temple would be coming aboard. “First of all, I think Temple is a great addition. I can’t get a word in edgewise with Rick praising Temple. I always thought Temple would be a great addition being in Philadelphia. That’s not against Rick, I don’t Twitter or Tweet or any of those things (laughter). You know what I’m talking about. But my point being is, Temple will be a great addition to our league. They’ve got a tremendous coach, it’s a great city for basketball, and I know that it will make an incredible trip there for a lot of folks. But West Virginia leaving is sad in many, many ways. One of the great experiences that UConn ever had, 1987, ’88, we go down there and we’re down two, Tate George makes a bank shot to send us to overtime and we hadn’t won anything from a national perspective, and we win. We go on to win the NIT that year, beat Ohio State in 1988, my second year there, and I remember walking around the coliseum, got the early update of the shoot around, looking at the history. I’m going to miss them greatly. I’m going to miss Bobby, going to miss the competitiveness, that’s the kind of game you play against them, and he’s heading on his way to being a Hall of Fame coach. I don’t think this league needs to be losing Hall of Fame coaches. I know it’s not basketball driven, but I’m going to miss them a great deal. I think West Virginia has been a great addition to this league, and from Jerry West to all the other great things that have happened, we’re going to miss them a great deal. They run a tremendous program, and my good friend John Beilein was there before and now Bobby, I’m going to miss them personally. It’s a place I like going. It was tough. Yes, I’m going to miss them a great deal”.

Bob Huggins weighed in on his feelings about this being the final press conference as a BIG EAST school: “I’s been a good run. We’ve enjoyed it, most of it anyway. I mean, there’s nothing like coming to the Garden to play in the tournament”.

But perhaps with the departure of West Virginia and the announcement of Temple arriving, there was little way any head coach could upstage the day, but Rick Pitino did exactly that after his squad survived Seton Hall 61-55 and he was asked what might have been a setup question about if he had any juice with the Selection Committee.

“Well, to show you how much clout I had with John Marinatto, if you look at the schedule this year, I think Syracuse is 1, Pitt was 2 or 3 and we played them both twice. I’ve been on the road four straight years at West Virginia. On the road twice with Cincinnati. I wish Sauce (John Marinatto) would get off his ass and follow the schedule and say one of my main guys in life is getting shafted with the schedule. I will say this, because this was a big day for us with Temple. John Marinatto, and you all know I love the guy, but he has done the most incredible job I’ve seen in some time. I didn’t even think he was up for this herculean effort. To get Boise State in football, San Diego State and all those teams all at once, and then we had to have Memphis, we had to have Temple. I’m real proud of him because he preserved the legacy of Dave Gavitt and all of us who loved Dave wanted to see the BIG EAST be preserved and he went out and got Memphis with their culture of urban basketball, real proud of Villanova for supporting their neighbor and getting them in, and we’re real excited to have them in.

I say this joking around. This guy Joe Lunardi has no agenda. How would you like to wake up in the morning and all you do is bracketology all day long? Can you imagine that? He doesn’t pay attention to his wife, he doesn’t pay attention to his children, all he does all night long is bracketology. So just follow him because his batting average is incredible. The only thing obviously is he doesn’t know where teams go, so if he does they’re in, they’re in. Everybody call Joe. Here’s his number, by the way, just write this down. But just ask him because he’s really on the money most of the time. I think Seton Hall is worthy to get in but you’re all going to say well, he loves Kevin Willard like a son. I think Seton Hall is terrific and they’ve had a good year.

Everybody says the BIG EAST gets so many teams. Look, Connecticut, they can beat anybody in the country and they’re in the bottom tier of the conference. I think they do, but I’ve got no sway with that type of stuff”.

Just another day in the BIG EAST Tournament!

 

BIG EAST Tournament

DAY ONE

When they talk about the Mount Rushmore of BIG EAST basketball it will be quite simple: Jim Boeheim, John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca, and of course Jim Calhoun.  The Connecticut Head Coach and Naismith Hall of Famer has had a tough go of it this season.  First the multi-game suspension to start this season from hell, and then the back troubles and pain which led to him stepping aside temporarily in favor of his long-time assistant George Blaney and the eventual back surgery. But here he is coaching with all the spit & vinegar he’s become famous for, pacing and patrolling the sidelines feisty and as vibrant as ever, storming on the sidelines, screaming and barking out instructions to his players just like the Calhoun of old.  During an opening round 81-67 beat-down of DePaul, he never let up.

 

This team sitting at 19-12 with the dream of redeeming a previously thought to be lost season began last year’s BIG EAST Tournament with a similar victory over DePaul will now look to their leader, their big daddy to lead them out from the shadows of irrelevance.  It’s all made especially painful that this team ran the proverbial table last season on their way to the National Championship.

 

This chock-full-of-talent roster led by a future star in Jeremy Lamb seem to respond well to the return of the crusty headmaster as they play in the ever-looming shadow of the UConn immortal: Kemba Walker.

 

Perhaps that crusty headmaster said it best after the DePaul victory. 

 

“Well, it’s crazy. Saturday was a very emotional time for all of us. It’s been a different kind of season. But through it all, somewhat by separation, I realized how much I cared about these kids. Just as Caron (Butler) is here in the locker room and all these kids and the guys who hold up the trophies and maybe sometimes you don’t hold up the trophy, but they’re your kids. Someone said I only have two years left on my extension. I don’t know if I can make two more minutes. For them to think, I’m grateful about that, I don’t know if I have two more years in my contract, now it’s like I’m calling the shots.

Someone better pay me for two more years. That’s what I’m saying. My point is, I’m trying to coach this basketball team, and that’s my job. But it’s also my love. It’s also my love. And that’s why I came back to my basketball team, because I felt I owed them something”.

 

Calhoun also spoke to  the specific issues about how his heath actually is: 

 

“The pain is a different kind of pain, it’s a muscular pain. Thank God it’s no longer a nerve pain and I’m not walking with a cane anymore. I couldn’t walk on with a cane on the sidelines because the officials might have been hit. There was always the fear of pain of some sort. But they told me to wait two weeks and I felt if I went out and walked on Tuesday, I got home at 5:00, I think, I was under anesthesia for three hours and they were aiming to take bone chips out and stuff. But to alleviate that pain was incredible. It took us three weeks to find the right solution, which wasn’t to put rods and fibers and fuses and all that stuff. We had a three and a half hour procedure, that was pretty intricate but not transforming in the sense that it’s a hole in my back and it’s sore, but nothing like a win or two wins now to make that but without question, I will definitely try to get more rest than I normally do”.

 

Women’s BIG EAST Basketball Coverage

Live courtside from Hartford, Ct.

 

Day Two recap/Day Three preview 

 

In one of the worst played games I’ve seen all year, West Virginia didn’t lose in their matchup with Syracuse prevailing 63-48.  The #5 seed committed 14 turnovers and shot a dismal 35.3% for the day.  Cuse shot 30.2%.  It was a slow-paced grinder game in which the more physical team was destined to survive and advance.  WVU outscored Cuse 23-8 off turnovers, capitalizing on the Orange’s miscues.

 

DePaul, led by a wild performance by junior guard Anna Martin who tallied 33 points, 7 boards and 6 helpers defeated USF 76-62 in the days best game, at least to watch. DePaul pounded the ball inside all game long and held a significant edge: 36-18 inside the paint.  They also held the Bulls to 32% shooting for the game.  Head Coach Doug Bruno on Martin: “Anna has done a great job of leading this basketball team and has been a horse down the stretch.   She’s the first recruit I can remember from Kentucky and it’s a simple concept that they have down in Kentucky, they don’t recruit athletes, they breed their athletes”.

 

Sophomore Shoni Schimmel dropped 20 points and snared 8 boards in leading the Louisville Cardinals to a 63-47 triumph over Villanova.  Off their 14 offensive glass cleaning effort, the Cardinals outscored the Wildcats 13-6 on second chance points.  L-ville shut down leading scorer Laura Sweeney through ball denial along with double teams and Head Coach Jeff Walz told me afterwards: “We decided to double team her.  As soon as she picked the ball up, we were going after her planning to get the ball out of her hands”.

 

I asked Nova’s affable Head Coach Harry Paretta what’s next for his 17-14 squad.  He told me: “We’re going to give them off until Thursday.  We have a lot of kids banged up.  Then we’ll come back and practice Thursday and Friday, off Saturday, back to practice Sunday, off Monday and wait for a bid, practice Tuesday and Wednesday and hopefully play on Thursday”.

 

In the not so grand finale, Rutgers got the better of a tough albeit young Marquette team 52-43.  Both teams shot poorly enough to lose – Rutgers 32%, Marquette 28.8%.  Monique Oliver led the way with 23 points and 11 rebounds along with 4 rejections.  Oliver was 11-16 from the line and 6-10 from the floor while her teammates were a dismal 10-40 from the floor.

 

Post game I asked Marquette sophomore point guard Gabi Minix what she learned from the tournament and she told me: “ As a team we learned that against all odds we can still come together”.  The Golden Eagles are a very young squad and will make noise next season.

 

Sunday we get four amazing games, Georgetown and Sugar Rodgers take on the physical Mountaineers of West Virginia. 

The second game of the day features the darlings of the tourney, and perhaps the nation: Notre Dame versus DePaul. Obviously the #1 seed is the favored squad and the joint will be jumping with Skylar Diggins in the house.

 In the nightcap session opener the Saint John’s Red Storm do battle with Louisville.  It’s a trap game for the Storm and they cannot take Jeff Walz’ team lightly.

 

And finally live in Hartford, Connecticut, its the UConn Huskies along with Husky Nation taking on Rutgers. 

Great games, great day!

 

 

 

 

Women’s BIG EAST Basketball Coverage

Live from Hartford, Ct.

 

A quick recap of Day One.

After their 57-47 elimination by Syracuse, Providence Head Coach Phil Seymore said: “I told the team to continue to work hard on their game and focus on their academics”.  Sounds like there may be an opening for a new coach.

After their 60-59 heartbreaking loss to USF, Pitt Head Coach Agnus Berenato walked into the media room and introduced herself individually to everyone including the camera people before going to the podium.  Freshman future star Brianna Keisel followed her coach’s lead.

USF forward Inga Orekhova who dropped 21 of her 25 points in the first half said: They basically left me open in the first half and I took the shots. In the second half they ran a box-and-one and they defended me really strong and I could not get the ball”.

Villanova escaped with a 61-60 win over Seton Hall. After the victory Head Coach Harry Perretta said: “What makes the BIG EAST Conference great: it’s not Connecticut or Notre Dame, it’s the 3 through 16 teams. A lot of those teams may not win games, but they are not winning because the league is really, really tough”.

Marquette provided the only opening day upset as they defeated Cincinnati 54-51 in a 14 versus 11 game. For that win they get Rutgers for the second time in six days. Head Coach Terri Mitchell said :”I think Rutgers is a very good team when the get into a rhythm and start to pick you apart.  We really need to keep them off balance”.

 

The BIG EAST Announced their Player of the Year to no one’s surprise: Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame.   Coach of the Year recognition went to Saint John’s Kim Barnes-Arico.  Connecticut’s Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis was  selected as 6^th Man as well as Freshman of the Year: the first time anyone has ever won those two awards in the same season.  Notre Dame’s Devereaux Peters was chosen as Defensive Player of the Year.

 

BIG EAST WBB Opening Session highlights

It’s a chance for redemption for some, an extension for others, but it’s a new season with everyone at 0-0 on the same supposed pedestal.

Of course, it’s tourney-time: conference style and Hartford, Ct. and the BIG EAST         Woman’s tourney is no exception.  In an ugly game with a very limited flow to it, Syracuse lives to fight another day by virtue of defeating Providence 57-47.

But the second game of session I was another matter altogether.  Very early in the second half USF led Pitt by 21 points.  So this one was clearly over, right?  Well, no, wrong.  Whatever Head Coach Agnus Berenato told her ladies in the locker room must have been a thing of beauty because her Panthers not only came back, but they took a 59-57 lead with 53 ticks on the clock on a Brianna Kiesel jumper, only to have USF’s Andrell Smith nail the door shut with a three with 43 seconds left to give the Bulls a 60-59 win.

What Berenato actually did was, well, let the coach tell the story: ”We went with a box-and-one.  “We talked about a couple of different things.  “We had never run the box-and-one all season.  We transformed it into a diamond-and-one depending on what shooters they had in.  I thought we really crashed the boards as well.  We really believed.  Even though we were down 19 at the half we really thought we were going to win”.

What makes this so amazing is that Pitt came in 8-21 but 0-16 in conference play.  Few gave them much of a chance that they’d win their first conference game in the opening round of the conference tournament. 

 Pitt’s top player freshman Brianna Kiesel showed that better days lie ahead for the Panthers after dropping 24 points.  For the victors, Inga Orekhova had a game high 25, but tallied 21 in the first half before Pitt changed their defense.

 

Gene Smith NCAA Chair, Men’s Selection Committee – Media Q&A 3/9/2011

DAVID WORLOCK: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking time through breakfast to join us this morning. We’re inside the selection room in downtown Indianapolis where the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee arrived last night in preparation for what promises to be an intriguing five days or so.
We’re with Gene Smith, the director of athletics at Ohio State University and the chair of the committee.
Gene, of course, is in this room for the selection, seeding and bracketing process for this year.
Gene, what do you expect will be different this time around and what do you think will be the same?
GENE SMITH: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being on the call. I’m excited for the opportunity to serve as committee of this chair. I’ve been blessed to tutor under four outstanding chairs, Dan Guerrero, Mike Slive, Tom O’Connor and Craig Littlepage.
Obviously, this is a great opportunity for us to make sure that we provide the proper service that we’re responsible for relative to the institutions across this country, the 334 teams who are eligible to play in this tournament. So we’re excited about the new opportunity to select 37 at-large teams that will couple up with the 31 automatic qualifiers.
We’re ready to go with Q&A.
I share we appreciate you being with us. I know there may be people out there who may want to ask questions about the Ohio State University case. Please, I ask that you be respectful. I’m here today as chair of the Men’s Basketball Committee. Those questions are reserved for a later days. We’re here to talk about the basketball tournament. I ask for your consideration of that request.
So, does anyone have any questions?

Q. I was wondering if you could restate your committee’s policy on whether more emphasis is placed on the last 10 or 12 games a team plays or if all of the season has equal emphasis?
GENE SMITH: As you know, most people know, for a period of time we had the last 10 or the last 12 on nitty-gritty sheets. We decided a couple years ago to eliminate that consideration. We leave that to each individual committee member to determine if that’s an important criteria for them.
It’s not an important criteria for the entire committee that we focus on like we did for that short period of time. Each committee member takes it into consideration in their own way.

Q. You are wearing two hats. Could you talk about the logistics for you, what it’s been like for you to shift gears, and how has it affected your role on the committee.
GENE SMITH: I am so lucky. As you know, I’m blessed with an outstanding staff at the Ohio State University. This committee is made up of a great deal of experience in this industry. They’re very close, cohesive. We work well together. Then we’re supported by a great NCAA staff.
We have two committee members who were having personal family challenges that we talked about on Saturday morning in our conference call, tried to help them feel comfortable with their personal issues that are significantly greater than mine. They had to go through some challenges. Things worked out well.
Logistically the NCAA worked with me to handle my travel in a great way. I’m ready to roll, get this responsibility going.

Q. A couple teams out there, including Florida State and Georgetown, that don’t have key players at least at this point, haven’t had them for the last couple of weeks. Georgetown specifically has lost some games. We don’t know yet if Chris is going to be able to play at all in the Big East tournament. How do you approach that? Also with Florida State, considering they have won some games without Singleton, how do you approach looking at those teams as you sit down and decide?
GENE SMITH: We take missing players and coaches into consideration as we look at the teams. We rely on information from the schools. We rely on information from the conference relative to their status.
But we still look at how those teamed performed at the end of the day. We look at how those teams responded to the adversity they faced, whether they lost a player early, got them back, were able to sustain. We kind of take it into consideration based upon the situation.
So we’ve had a chance to see different teams with injured players, with players who became injured, without. We always take it into consideration.

Q. With so much attention being given to the first four, how sensitive is the committee to the scrutiny you’re sure to receive on which teams are selected, if they’re from mid-majors, power conferences? Do you think that will go into consideration at all? My second question is, what are you doing to make sure that the experience in Dayton is a true NCAA tournament experience for all the participants?
GENE SMITH: I’ll answer your second question first.
The reason we went to Dayton is because Dayton demonstrated historically the ability to attract fans and provide a quality experience for the student-athletes, the coaches and the fans. They came to Dayton. We feel very confident with Dayton as a host, how they operate, that these people will have a great experience.
We’re prepared to manage the travel issues they will encounter, try to make it as seamless a transition for them as we possibly can.
We have a first-class television crew in Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and Steve Kerr. The awareness to the exposure these young people will receive is at the highest level.
We will go through our normal process of selecting, seeding and bracketing. We will go through 1 through 68. We’re very confident in the 35th, 36th, 37th slots that the at-large teams going to Dayton will be excited to go.
This is March Madness. Whether it’s the first four or the first eight at the top of the bracket, people are going to analyze, they’re going to debate, be excited, disagree. That’s part of what this is, part of what we’re blessed to serve, is that excitement that comes with March Madness.
The first four, relative to your question, is new. Every single year we evaluate what we did the previous year. In May and in June when we have our meetings to look back at the tournament, the first four will go under its first scrutiny with the committee. Anything that we feel we need to modify based on that experience we’ll modify.
So we’re excited about it. Our biggest emphasis is what you talked about, making sure that the teams and the coaches and the fans that follow them come and just have a great experience in Dayton. We’re really excited about it.

Q. I wanted to ask you about teams that are kind of out there, maybe not even quite on the bubble, how much a team can do in a conference tournament, short of winning it, to get a bid? How many teams out there are in that mode where they can still play their way in?
GENE SMITH: I really can’t tell you and speculate how many teams are like that. We will submit our first ballots this afternoon probably around 4:00 after we do administrative work, talk about teams.
Certainly a team or teams have an opportunity to get some quality wins to add to their résumé. But really there’s five thousand games played throughout the season. The tournament is very small compared to the number of games that are played during the gauntlet, which is the regular season.
Really you might be able to have an impact in your first game, depending when your tournament is, maybe your second game. The reality is that most teams will be advantaged by the tournament are those who come through and win it and become automatic qualifiers.
A team can enhance their résumé a little bit.

Q. How committed is the committee to putting the first four participants into a second- and third-round site nearby Dayton? Is there one predominant challenge in dealing with this whole ‘first four’ concept this year?
GENE SMITH: We will do everything we can to pay close attention to geography and respect travel. We try to do that every year. But we won’t sacrifice the integrity of the seeding process to do that.
So it’s likely that we could have a team coming from an out-of-market distance to Dayton. We have prepared. We’ve done our preplanning to be able to on Sunday help those institutions with travel.
We’re really lucky because we have sites in D.C., Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland that are options, reasonable options, for those teams to advance to. We have things set up for us in a good way when we face that moment.
Hopefully we can respect geography. Again, so everybody is aware, we will not sacrifice seed for that. We go through a tough process to seed teams appropriately and with respect to the competition nationally. So we won’t step out of that in order to address the geography issues.
As it is, we’ll do the best we can. 

-George “Roadie” Rodecker

 

Mick Cronin, Head Coach Cincinnati post game press conference

COACH CRONIN: Well, obviously Notre Dame played tremendous tonight and we obviously were at our worst, they were at their best. We got taken to the wood shed and fortunately for us, it’s not the NCAA Tournament, and we learn some lessons that we probably needed to learn before next week.
I was concerned with the way our game went last night, I thought it was — it got probably took the edge off of us, and our team is a different team what we don’t have our edge, not that we would have won tonight but I thought that last night winning the way we won was — it was false hope and it softened us up a little bit and a bad time to get softened up, but you’ve got to give Notre Dame all the credit.

Q. Coach, do you go back and this or do you wipe the slate clean and try it put this behind you?
COACH CRONIN: We know what happened. They’re tough to defend, and at some point the fact that we wouldn’t make a shot started affecting our defense. Their great offense at times I thought demoralized us, but we tried man, zone, we tried pass. We tried everything. We couldn’t get the stopped we needed and we couldn’t get anything going on the offensive end. Even our free-throws were 8 for 17, so a frustrating night for our guys.
For us, I would rather go into the NCAA Tournament this way than winning the Big East tournament, as much as I would love to win the Big East it’s better to get home and get rested. I say that because our team is better after a loss. We’ve struggled a little bit to handle success. That’s what I alluded to at last night’s game. When we lose our edge, our toughness, we’re not the same team, not that we would have won tonight but I think our guys now are going to be back to thinking they got to prove themselves next week so we’re better when we have that mind-set.

 

Mike Brey Head Coach Notre Dame post game press conference

COACH BREY: Obviously we were ready to play. We got out of the gate great. Our offensive efficiency was excellent. I thought we did a good enough job on the backboard of not letting them get second shots early, that’s what you’re worried about with them.
I thought we made a good job of making decisions when they pressed us to get open looks when we had numbers advantages and it’s good to play well on that floor because we would like to keep playing here for a while.

Q. Mike, when did you get an indication during shootaround today where you knew these guys were ready to play and play this well?
COACH BREY: Tom, I think in our practices, in our flight out, these guys came out with focus. We made some comparisons to the Old Spice where we won three in a row and won a championship and the same format coming. Our captains, these three guys especially have done a great job talking about getting our program to Saturday night here so they were good all week.

Q. Mike, I know you don’t care about No. 1 seeds and offensively that but it’s in the conversation. Do you feel like your team belongs in that conversation?
COACH BREY: Absolutely, we do. I haven’t talked to them about that much because we talked about coming here and getting our program to Saturday night. Somewhere we’ve never been and I feel it’s the next step after we’ve been so consistent, we’ve been to the semis, but strong resume for it, absolutely.

Q. With all of the conversation going on how do you guard your guys against them and do you try and embrace it? Do you insulate them from it?
COACH BREY: NCAA Tournament conversation? They’ve been good. I told them when we got back from Connecticut I said I don’t want anybody quoted talking about the NCAA Tournament and these guys are men. They’ve been around. They talk about it but let’s talk about New York. We put a highlight together, tape, centered on playing in New York, didn’t talk about the NCAA or No. 1 seed, certainly that could take care of itself but I’m not worried about focus with the maturity of the group.

Q. Mike, you were up 13-5 when Ty got his second foul and you out-scored them the rest of the half. Did you anticipate that they would try to go to Gates early?
COACH BREY: Yeah, and it wasn’t a great foul by him, but Jack comes in and has given us good stuff and Eric gives us good stuff. We played differently and to Nash’s credit I told him in the locker room I said you’re playing all 20 minutes in the second half. He smiled, he gets a bucket early and it gets him going, I’ve said sometimes we have six starters, sometimes we have seven starters and every one of these guys has sat out when our other nucleus has made a run, Ben sat out of some games in Orlando, Carleton in the Gonzaga game didn’t play — everybody has been odd man out and the guy sitting out is secure enough to know “I’m going to get my chance.”

Q. Mike, coming into this tournament you’d won 11-12, and then you had the performance like you had tonight. What does that say about this crazy conference that you guys are getting better and better?
COACH BREY: I was talking to Jack Swarbrick coming over here and when you have a performance like that on this stage it’s something you’re proud of and hopefully our guys are. I hope it can give us momentum to play in New York, everybody is watching our tournament. Kansas City is watching our tournament, Greensboro is watching our tournament, they’re watching, we threw a fan out tonight, was that my dad they threw out tonight? Only in the Big East they got a fan thrown out. That will be on ESPN later.
So to do it on Broadway, I took these guys to Jersey Boys on Tuesday not so much for the entertainment or the culture, I wanted them to see the best actors and chemistry and how a group plays off of each other because I believe that’s what they’ve done this year. So we were like Jersey Boys tonight we were all doin’ our thing.
You want to sing the songs — let’s get out of here! (Chuckles.)

 

Buzz Williams, Head Coach Marquette post game press conference

Q. How much were the legs a factor tonight three straight games, three straight nights?
COACH WILLIAMS: I don’t know. I think that’s hard to quantify. I think it’s easy to justify but I think it’s hard to quantify.
I thought Louisville was great. Anytime a team scores 50% of their points from the 3-point line it’s probably going to be a long night. I thought we were okay at times in the first half and I thought we were really bad in the second half. But to play the 14th ranked team in the country who has had five days off who has been studying us live since we got here to say that the reason they beat us the way they did was because we had no legs I think is a soft answer. I don’t think we’ve been soft since we’ve been here so I don’t want to leave here with a soft response.

Q. Buzz, the Big East can provide so many highs and lows, you have to be the leader through it all. What do you say to your group after tonight?
COACH WILLIAMS: We were 6 and 7 after we played St. John’s at home so we were five games remaining, three at home, two on the road. We won three of those five over a 10-day period and — excuse me, we won three in a row over a 10-day period and then we lost two in a row to finish the season over a seven-day period so we finished 9 and 9. You could argue that according to the media all we had to do was win one of those last two, and then we came here. We landed in New York not knowing conclusively what it is we had to do. I thought we played well against Providence, and then, you know, the people that still thought that we had work to do, whether that was true or not, I thought our guys responded last night.
When you think about the last 23 days of our guys’ lives, emotionally, mentally and physically, there have been a roller coaster of up’s and down’s and I thought through it all at the very end they answered the bell and I thought that their character was revealed and that’s what I said in the locker room, we’re one of 37 teams that will have their name announced as an at-large team on Sunday and this previous Sunday we were practicing at 10:00 in the morning doing things we did on the first day of practice not knowing where we would be playing or if our name would be announced so I think that speaks to all of the guys that are in the locker room, our players, assistants, managers, support staff, because I think it’s been a hard grind over the last 23 days.

Q. You guys gave up 37 three’s here and you include the Seton Hall game. How important is that going to be for you to shore that up?
COACH WILLIAMS: If you don’t guard the ball teams are going to shoot open sides. When you play major teams they’re going to have guys that can make three’s. We didn’t guard the ball well tonight. We didn’t guard the ball well against Seton Hall. I know entering tonight, teams shot 31% from two’s and 44% from three’s. And 44 is a little too high and 31 is good enough to continue to play. So we need to be able to guard the ball so that the ball handler doesn’t force help, which allows for open shots.
COACH WILLIAMS: I would say a combination of all of it. Chris has done a good job of sealing his man and being in a position to get a deep catch. Our guys are much more comfortable throwing it to him inside. I thought too many possessions, we played free-throw lines and extended above and against a zone. You can’t do that which is why Chris didn’t shoot a shot, which is why we only had 7 assists, partly why we had 12 turnovers.
So a multitude of reasons but all of our post guys need to get touches whether or not that turns into a field goal attempt is dependent upon how they’re playing the post but it’s a collection of all those things.
Since both of you have been hear you haven’t been able to make that deep run in the NCAA Tournament. Were you looking to take anything out of this conference tournament that could help you in the Big Dance?
COACH WILLIAMS: I think we’ve been pretty good in New York. We haven’t been great but I think we’ve held our own. During Jimmy’s tenure entering tonight he was 5-2 in his tenure at Marquette and each year has had a different scenario. In Jimmy’s first year we were 10-2 and Dominic James broke his foot. We started out the second year for him, 2 and 5 and went on to win 9 of 11 but both of those years we arrived in New York knowing that we were a NCAA Tournament team. In year number three it was the worst Big East record that Marquette has ever had in Big East play we finished 500 and he came here not knowing where we would be the next week and we won two and got blitzed in the second half tonight but what we accomplished while here, 5-3, that’s probably a little above average. You always want to recruit, coach, live, to try to put yourself in a position to win a championship.
Not just to go 5-3, but to win a championship. Each of those years there is a story behind it. I think Jimmy has been a big part of it since he’s been here and as he just mentioned in his last answer, for three consecutive years he will win a ring for going to the NCAA Tournament, and, you know, he has a losing record as do I, in the NCAA Tournament so hopefully we can play past the first weekend and he can have a winning record as a collegiate player in postseason, very few guys do that.

 

Rick Pitino, Head Coach Louisville post game press conference

COACH PITINO: Well, we played great defense tonight and highly, highly intelligent offense of sharing the basketball and hitting the open man. We’re a pretty good basketball team even though we’re small when we contain the backboard.
Our bad games because we are small is what the other team offensively rebounds because we give them second shots and tonight we didn’t do that. We’re proud of the guys, I worry about the double bye sometimes not be prepared but our guys have been terrific and Preston shows his multitalented play because he’s been getting about 5, 6, 7 assists a game. We’ve been using him as the back-up point and you can see tonight he had 7 assists, 1 turnover playing 31 minutes of play. He’s a great leader for our team and we’re proud of his effort as well as the other guys.

Q. I think it’s 5 out of 66 games you’ve held your opponents under 50 points, is this the best stretch of defense you’ve played all year?
COACH PITINO: We played well at West Virginia in a tough environment and in this league we’ve won some flukes, Marquette played us well at home and we lost a fluke the other night being up with 19 seconds but it was a great learning lesson for our players to handle those situations and it’s a fun group to coach, not since 1987 have I had this much fun coaching a basketball team.

Q. Rick, what in particular worried you about the double bye and why were you able to overcome it tonight?
COACH PITINO: I just like to play a little bit rather than sitting — I think we did an intelligent thing, we didn’t come until late Wednesday so we treated it just like a road game, and we didn’t need to rest. We’ve had so many injuries this year, we had — Gorgui Dieng missed a month, we had guys miss a minimum of 10 days to two weeks so I feel the more we play the better we’ll get and I don’t think any coach is a big proponent of the double bye. We wanted to have one bye and we got voted down.

Q. Would you elaborate on why you say this is the most enjoyment you’ve had since 1987 coaching a team?
COACH PITINO: In this day and age everybody uses cliches that sound nice but they’re not necessarily true about playing for the name on the front of your chest and not playing for the name on the back of your chest. This team epitomizes that. They absolutely do not care about themselves and I think Preston starts from your best player and filters down. All of these guys care about winning, and when you get that type of attitude and it’s been a long time as I’ve seen the players be as disappointed as the coaching staff and these guys take it just as hard as we do.

Q. Rick, talk about the first half, the lift the bench gave with Marra’s 3-pointers and Van Treese coming in and doing well?
COACH PITINO: He did a good job. I think offensive assists have made our offense better. Here is a young man who didn’t understand a pick-and-roll and now he’s mastered it to where he’s great at it and he’s one that used the screen but he’s now become a point guard what is great for his future.
These guys are learning and getting better and I think passing is the key we’ve knocked just a few percentage points behind Pittsburgh in assists and it’s been that way all season so good passing leading to good percentages.

Q. Coach, the Big East was at its height in 1987 and it’s back to it’s prominence. Talk about the significance of this year for the conference.
COACH PITINO: It’s much more difficult now than it was back then because back then from a preparation standpoint you knew exactly the way Rollie Massimino was going to play and the way Carnesecca was going to play and the way John Thompson was going to play, so preparation wasn’t a key. With this league it’s so mentally taxing because these coaches are so outstanding in what they do.
You know, Mick Cronin had a tremendous year as a coach. Buzz is one of the best young coaches in the nation and his teams always bring it. They always play hard. Villanova is in a slump now but I know they’ll come back because they’re a big-time character team so that’s the most difficult thing you play against West Virginia and Cincinnati. If you don’t strap it on you’re going to get whipped physically and back then it was easier because you knew the most exciting thing was the sweater Lou was going to wear or the coat that John was — it’s very difficult I’m happy we got John Beilein out of league.

Q. This is starting to feel like a walk down memory lane but in ’87 does Billy Donovan and Ben Hansbrough, do you see any similarities there?
COACH PITINO: Hansbrough is a deeper shooter, Billy the Kid was quicker with the ball. Their toughness is the same. He truly did deserve to be one of the premiere guards he’s going to have an outstanding NBA career, he has a good first step, he runs the pick-and-roll really well.
There are similarities in how they dish it at teammates, very unselfish group, Notre Dame, they’re all 28 and 29 this year.

Q. It’s safe to say you and Mike Brey had good things to say here tonight after the games, what do you make of the match-up tomorrow?
COACH PITINO: We were disappointed we lost last time because we had the ball and didn’t score and it was an overtime loss but you’ve got to give them credit they outplayed us in overtime. I told these guys before the game than not since 1996 did I walk into a place and feel as confident as this. In ’96 I had a reason to feel confident. I had eight pros. But the way these guys play with the sacrifices and the dedication, we know with we’re not going to be flat, we know we could lose but we know we’re not going to be flat from a standpoint and you know your team is going to bring it and Notre Dame is tough, they’re skilled, they put on a passing clinic each night, but we’re a good passing team as well, it will be a good match-up.