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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SAN DIEGO

March 18, 2018

San Diego, California

West Virginia - 94, Marshall - 71

THE MODERATOR: For Marshall, the student-athletes are Jon Elmore and Ajdin Penava and Coach Dan D'Antoni. We will begin with an opening statement.

DAN D'ANTONI: Well, we ran into a very good, very good West Virginia team. They should be proud of the way they played. Carter is an exceptional player. He determines a lot of things out there. Very strong. I congratulated and told him how good he was and told him to get the hell out of here. Tired of seeing him. Tired of playing him. He's tough.

Proud of our kids. It was a great journey. They've lifted Marshall basketball furtherer than its been, ever. This is the first time we've been here. If you go to the pitching cages you start at 6 mile an hour and you swing and feel good about yourself and get to the 70s, feel pretty good, 80s, maybe takes you two or three swings, figure it out. Get in the 90s and it takes time to get used to it. They throw 90 mile an hour at you and you have to get used to it. It hurt us that the Williams kid went down. That was most of our size, but we will be back next year.

I think you will be surprised what we will do in one year. We want to keep it at a national level and this was a great start by some guys that, like I always said, you're in a car, it's an hell of a car ride and I enjoyed it. We stop now, but we will get back on that floor again pretty soon and enjoy playing basketball together again.

Q. Jon, what did they do best against you tonight and what problems did you have that may have been of your own doing?
JON ELMORE: Like Coach said, credit to them. They're a heck of a team. They get after it. I think their physicality got to us a little bit. They got quick hands, handshake, ride you up the floor. They defend, trap, run all different kinds of guys at you. They're versatile. Credit to them. They did a great job, but like Coach said we're going back to the drawing board and I think we'll come back better than ever.

Q. What can you take away from this?
DAN D'ANTONI: Well, our ball movement wasn't good enough. We weren't cutting hard enough. This team, when you're setting up, some teams you can kind of jog over where you want to be. Can't do that with this team. This team you have to sprint every second all the time. I think what we learned is that in order to get ball movement you have to space faster. We were too slow. We were coming up into the play and really got into space and when we did we stood and watched the ball instead of making strong cuts and moves against a team that's not going to let you set up. You're not going to set up and run offense against this team, especially the way they played tonight because it was a full press the whole time. The other thing is we'll probably have to get in the weight room.

AJDIN PENAVA: As far as I go, Coach said I gotta hit the weight room and that's probably, you know, I can emphasize this off-season. Just get my weight up and get stronger.

JON ELMORE: Same thing with the Dean. Like you said, they're a physical team, like you saw, we're going to have to go back to the drawing board, you gotta get bigger, faster, stronger. That's what our guys are going to do. We have a great strength staff, great staff. And we have the city of Huntington and state support. As you have seen we have kind of turned Marshall basketball around and we're heading in the right direction, but we're not satisfied yet. As you have seen, Conference USA has come to the NCAA tournament the last four years and won games. So we play in a tough conference, but we think we are right there at the top of the net. So we're going to keep rolling and hopefully keep improving.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen. Questions for Coach?

Q. Looked like at times you couldn't catch a break. You had the injury, people slipping on the floor, you know, unforced?
DAN D'ANTONI: We didn't play well. We didn't play as hard as we're going to have to play. Listen, you gotta give them credit. They're tough. We're not used to it, but I'll say this: The game that we play should be played all the time. We would be better. It's better for West Virginia. Nobody lost this game. We won. We had the passion of West Virginia people there, passion of Marshall people there. That's what life is about. We came up on the short end. We're not going to always be at the short end. We were a lot shorter on the real short end about four years ago. We climbing up that rope. We're going to climb. Those boys will be back in the gym in two weeks.

Then you gotta give Carter his due. Thank goodness he's graduating. I don't have to face him again. He's really, really good. But I'm proud of our team. I'm proud of our fans. I'm proud of where we are. I'm proud of my staff, and you learn. You get better. It's a basketball game. It ain't life. It's basketball. We're going to get better. How many teams are playing now? 16 in the top round? 16. I remember playing in the top 200, so you know what? It ain't bad getting to the top 16. Nobody is a loser once you make this NCAA Tournament. They're all good teams.

Q. You mentioned that this game should happen every year. What in your mind is holding it back from happening every year?
DAN D'ANTONI: You know what's holding it back? I'm not going to, I'll play, I'm not going to go up there, though. We have a good program. We made the NCAA Tournament. We made the first round win. We're a legit program. So play us. It's that simple. Whatever reasons they have, I don't know. Maybe they have a good reason. I don't see it, but maybe they do. Maybe they do.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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