NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - NOTRE DAME VS ALABAMA

March 18, 2022

Nate Oats

JD Davison

Keon Ellis

Viejas Arena

Alabama Crimson Tide

Media Conference

Notre Dame - 78, Alabama - 64

COACH OATS: Tough loss. I mean, gotta give Notre Dame a lot of credit to play in a play-in game and go double overtime, fly in here as late as they did, play with one-day rest and give the energy they got. It shows they've got some veteran, mature guys that can execute a game plan off a day prep. I saw a stat in one of their games, I think they four or five 1,000 scorers. We've got one on our team.

We talk in college about veteran college players. I think it showed today.

I feel for Jahvon. Don't know exactly what it is, but some significant knee injury. I thought he was ready to play. I thought he'd had a great few weeks of practice. AT voluntary shooting deal last night, he was the only guy that went. Shot it really well. I thought he was ready to play, and three minutes into the game he gets the knee injury, can't play the rest of the game. Life happens. Adversity hits and you've got to face it.

We thought JD played well in his 36 minutes. He didn't prepare like nobody thought he would have played 36 minutes as good as Jahvon was playing in practice. But JD had nine assists, 11 and nine. And good game for a freshman in an NCAA Tournament.

We couldn't make shots. They made shots. Obviously Cormac going 7-of-9 from 3 was a huge factor in the game. He had 29 points. He's obviously really good and we didn't play well enough to win. They were the better team today and gotta give them a lot of credit.

Q. When Quinerly goes out for you, how does that change things for you in the starting lineup?

KEON ELLIS: Definitely a big loss. He's the starting point guard so he's a big piece of what we do. We definitely felt the impact of losing him. But just, like I said, no one expected that three minutes into the game. So then it was just was JD's turn to step up and fill that role. Like Coach said, life happens. You never know when your time is coming. It was definitely a big loss for us.

Q. Coach, I know it just ended, the game, but how would you define this season overall?

COACH OATS: It was a successful season by a lot of standards. Obviously we're a little disappointed. We thought we could have been a lot better. We were looking forward to making a deeper run than we made. We were the top 6 seed. The tournament committee had us as the 21st-best team in the country, which three years ago, when we got here, we would have taken that.

But where we got to at some point in the year we were obviously expecting better than this. I think we're the only team in the tournament that's beaten two No. 1 seeds. We beat Baylor and Gonzaga.

So it's inconsistent, a little up and down. But we made the tournament as a 6 seed with a chance to advance. We just didn't play well in the first round. It's not easy. You see some other pretty successful teams in the SEC didn't make it out of the first round, too -- at least one other one.

It's just hard. The NCAA Tournament is tough. Notre Dame's a good team. They're a veteran group and they made shots.

So overall, I'd say we had a successful season just a little disappointed, a little inconsistent, to be honest with you. And the inconsistencies bothered us. All the fans were a little annoyed -- the coaching staff, the players were annoyed. Some of our losses were really unacceptable. But we had some great wins. I told the guys, let's try to remember the great moments of the season. Some will be back. Some won't. The ones that are moving on, we've got some good memories of the year, just disappointing end to it.

Q. JD, how did your mindset change once JQ went down and you knew you were going to step into that point guard role more? And how did your teammates help pick you up in that scenario?

JD DAVISON: It was go out there and lead the guys in all aspects of the game. They just helped me pick my head up and told me to go out there. Told me, you're a freshman, just go out there and lead the guys and try to win this game.

Q. Keon, I think you played 39 minutes. Mike Brey said it looked like some guys were exhausted out there because of JQ and losing his minutes. How did you feel physically in this game because of that?

KEON ELLIS: I felt fine, honestly. I wasn't like all the way tired to the point where I couldn't, I needed a breather. Just a couple of bang-bang plays where your body is hurting a little bit. But I wasn't tired to where I needed a break.

It's March, so you've got to expect unexpected. He went down. And I just knew -- a situation like that may come up. So I was ready for it.

Q. Keon, you finished as leading scorer or you got 10 of your final 16 points in the last eight minutes of the game, kind of weren't shooting a lot early. You've talked in the past about your teammates kind of telling you you need to shoot more. Was it more you just felt you weren't getting open looks or you needed to get more confident as the game went on?

KEON ELLIS: I think early on I passed up a couple shots that I should have shot. I think one time I turned it over, and Coach and everybody else was telling me, like, I have to shoot that. I think going into the second half, I was looking more so to shoot first than anything. And he told me if anything was, if we were going to turn this around they needed me to shoot the wide-open shot. So I can't pass those up. And I just shot the good ones.

Q. Keon, was this a rally in a way at halftime when you went down and saw your teammate that didn't return, did you guys rally together at halftime, say something to him? What was that experience like in the locker room?

KEON ELLIS: We all pulled it together. JQ even said something to us, just to try to go out there and play for him. That's enough motivation in itself knowing -- he probably was more ready to play this game than anybody. He was practicing hard all week. He was intense. His talk was great during practice and everything. Came out ready the play and just unfortunate that he went down. So I think at halftime he really wanted to emphasize like this game isn't over. Like, no matter the score or whatever, just keep playing.

Q. You talked all week about your three points of emphasis -- reducing turnovers, making free throws, making layups. What did you think about your team's performance in those three categories?

COACH OATS: The turnovers, they weren't where we wanted them. They weren't as bad as they've been. Somewhere in the middle. I didn't think we lost the game. We turned them over 18 times. They're one of the better teams in the country not turning the ball over. We only turned it over 14 times.

But we couldn't convert at the rim. For whatever reason, we haven't been finishing very well. Had a lot of guys miss layups tonight. I think the official stat has 11-of-22. Our guys chartered it, 18-of-34 on the games. It's not good. We had 16 missed layups. We needed to convert some of those.

We didn't get to the free-throw line enough. We only shot seven free throws, 4-of-7. It's not a great percentage. But it's such low numbers. We needed to attack a little bit better.

We got down in the second half. Ended up taking a few more 3s, and just -- only shot 24 3s, less than we normally shoot. For whatever reason we didn't get to the free-throw line much. We only made 4-of-7. So our turnovers were probably good enough to win, finishing wasn't good enough. We didn't get to the free-throw line enough.

Q. When someone like Cormac kind of goes bananas like he did in that game, unexpectedly, how difficult is it to pivot when he's just shooting everything with hands in his face?

COACH OATS: Shoot, that one second half deep, with about a half a second on the shot clock, that was a killer. I thought our guys got some energy, played hard. We had the tough call when Juwan had the steal, that we thought we'd get a breakaway on. I thought it was an intentional foul. It went the other way. Our guys were resilient enough, hang in there, hang in there, we played a great 29 seconds of defense and he hits some crazy shot. It's tough.

I thought early we gave him fist one in transition, didn't do a good job. Then we gave him two in a row on sets we've gone through how to defend. We didn't defend him. Didn't play hard enough. That kind of got him going. That's the issue when you have good players like that. You can't get them going by giving them transition buckets and not guarding the set right.

Now all of a sudden he's hit 3 and. Now he's cooking and we have a problem at that point. Ends up going 7-of-9 from 3 with 29 points. They're a really good team. But he is the main reason they won this game. We just didn't do a good job with him.

Q. You mentioned JQ was the only player at that voluntary shoot-around. For context, is that something you'd expect more players to be at?

COACH OATS: We had one this morning. We had three guys come this morning. He was the one last night. We kind of made it voluntary because we wanted guys to be smart making sure their legs were fresh. And some guys had gone the night before and he didn't. So then he went. We had shooting times at a high school gym every night here because our guys get in the gym a lot on their own back home. He shot it really well last night.

We had most of the teams, I think all the teams gave up their 20-minute shooting time here. We actually kept ours and three guys came as a voluntary deal. Shack and Keon were in this morning. They were in the night before. Our main guys got the most of the shots up, got bulk of those shooting times. But JQ was the only one that came last night.

Q. Overall, where did you see the buy-in from this team throughout the course of the year?

COACH OATS: That's a good question. I thought at times it was as good as it was the year before. I thought maybe we handled adversity a little -- not quite as well. Sometimes shots weren't going in. I thought effort waned a little bit here and there.

I think our maturity wasn't quite maybe what the year before was, to be honest with you, just to be able to handle some adversity. I thought guys wanted to do well. I thought they were great teammates. They were a good group to be around. I thought that they bought into being good teammates.

Just the understanding of what it takes to win at this level -- again, they talk about trying to get old, stay old -- we had a lot of young inexperienced guys. Look at what we had tonight. JD plays 36 minutes. He's a freshman. Keon Ellis is in his second year of Division I basketball. We didn't have a senior that played four years for us. Noah Gurley transferred from a mid-major, first-year in high major basketball. We had a lot of guys that were not -- Charles Bediako started for us as a freshman.

So the buy-in was there for most of them most of the time. We definitely didn't have the experience Notre Dame had with their guys that have played a lot of games. Just maturity, experience, those things go a long ways.

Herb Jones is showing how good he was last year in the NBA this year. Primo is playing well. Petty was pretty good. You think of those guys, (indiscernible) earns a fifth year senior. Reese, Petty, Herb are all seniors. Primo is a really good player. You lose those five guys and you don't have seniors that have been in the program for that long to step up -- I don't think buy-in was necessarily an issue as much as maturity and experience were.

Q. When you're coaching a team through a roller coaster season like this, what are some things you learned or you take away from the season moving forward as a coach?

COACH OATS: That's a good question. I think every little thing matters. You know that as a coach, but sometimes when you win -- it's a lot easier to teach after a loss. We've got to figure out better ways to teach. Sometimes shooting masks a lot of sins. And those sins don't get fixed because you won the game and you don't think they're that big a deal.

I think managing guys' mental state, if you will, through wins is really important. Like, you've got to be able to convince them that we've got to change and get better, even though we won. Sometimes through losses you've got to be a little more positive.

We did certain things well. We just missed shots. Keep up. But I'm still a little frustrated. We ended up as a 6 seed. With the wins we had, if we would have won the games we lost that we should have won, we would have probably been a 3 seed, maybe, 2, 3 seed somewhere.

If you're a 2, 3 seed, you're not playing Notre Dame in the first round. Our loss at Missouri, Georgia, some of those other losses that we were definitely the better team then, those come back to haunt you at the end, and they did that this year.

Maybe we could withstand Quinerly going down if we had been a 3 seed today and played a 14 seed instead of having to play a Notre Dame that is really experienced like we did.

We've got to do a better job keeping our guys engaged after big wins. With the effort they need to continue to win like that, even if our shots aren't dropping or whatever it is. You learn a lot every year as a coach. We've certainly learned a lot as coaches this year too.

Q. With Jahvon's injuries, what are the next step to determine the extent of it?

COACH OATS: He's going to have to get an MRI. Our trainer, team doctor will get him home. I think we're flying home tonight, get an MRI as quick as we can. They'll figure out what it is.

And then disappointed for him because he's going to graduate this spring. He was going to test the draft process. His plan was to go be a professional. It's obviously going to put a big chink in those plans.

He's a good kid. His parents are great. They were in there at halftime. Tough situation for him.

But the doctor didn't think it was good. We just don't want to speculate on what it is yet until we get an MRI. Don't know.

Q. Obviously losing JQ had a big impact on the game. How did Charles getting in foul trouble and ultimately fouling out affect what you were able to do on offense and defense especially in the second half?

COACH OATS: It was huge. Looking at the box score, he's the only guy on our team that was positive in the plus/minus. Big in our defensive plan with them. Atkinson was only one that played that doesn't shoot 3s. He was really good. Charles did a pretty good one-on-one on with them. Better than our other guys. That enabled us to just build out, not have to help at all.

Us putting Charles back in when we did with the four fouls kind of showed you the importance of him. We had to go with him. We're starting to lose too much.

And you look at his fouls. They're a moving screen foul, fouling on the offensive rebound, it was questionable. He had the blocking foul down there guarding the dribbler. It wasn't like he was fouling guarding Atkinson. He had some tough calls on him.

It's the way it goes in basketball, period, but for sure in the NCAA Tournament. Our playing without him wasn't as good as our playing with him. Him getting in foul trouble didn't hurt us quite as much Quinerly not playing at all after the first three minutes, but it definitely hurt us a lot today.