BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2000

Mario Bland

Leonard Hamilton

Vernon Jennings

Elton Tyler

COACH HAMILTON: I was very happy. You know, really, basically, seriously, I'd like to see our guys get up, be there on the courts, contest shots. You just have to hope that the things we've been doing all year long are good enough to win these types of games. We gave the one kid, the 15, Macura, a wide open look, he knocked it down. I was surprised he only hit three threes. I can't believe the stats are correct, because we he felt that they had some good looks, just didn't fall tonight.

COACH HAMILTON: According to this it says what? He had six. Hit threes, 225. I guess I should be happy that we held them to 24.

ELTON TYLER: Just got to try to, you know, stay in front of them and limit his touches. There's a different game plan every time for every big man. It may be something different for someone else.

MARIO BLAND: Basically what El said. We want to limit his touches. Troy Murphy has played a year in the conference. He's a good basketball player but a good basketball player can't score without the ball.

ELTON TYLER: I was trying to finish the play basically. You know, we have great defense, so after that, I knew we were going to get a stop on something like that. I was just trying to confirm another play.

ELTON TYLER: Coach said watch the eyes of the inbounder. I know he caught back and I just jumped. I knew he was about to throw it, so I jumped inside as I could.

COACH HAMILTON: Murphy's such a physical player with such good touch. If you give him good looks, he's going to score. So we just try to make him work hard and we've been very fortunate that he hasn't gone all force. Our kids work real hard. The guy is the person -- I'm not sure we were banging him. I don't know who was banging who. He's very aggressive and very physical. He makes you work in possession. You know, I think he's dishing it out about as much as anybody I've ever seen. We've just been very fortunate, and our respect for him, I think he brings the best out of our kids defensively. We know we don't play them for a lot of concentration, he'll knock down shots.

VERNON JENNINGS: Second half we knew we had to come out and play harder because we felt that they outplayed us in the first half even though the score didn't indicate that. Second half we came out, stepped up our pressure and tried to control the game and contest all the threes because we knew they was a good three-point shooting team.

MARIO BLAND: Nothing like that. We was just playing a game of this magnitude against a team, Notre Dame, obviously we beat them twice in the regular season. That moment, we both were fired up. I guess myself and John just got caught up in the moment. Things happen. We stopped ourselves before anything escalated, anything happened further than what happened.

COACH HAMILTON: You're not going to get me to start talking about playing St. John's.

COACH HAMILTON: Yes. This would -- we're building tradition. Every time we accomplish something it's good for our program. For us to have an opportunity to be successful tomorrow night would really mean an awful lot to us. And so we're going to come into tomorrow night's game realizing that it's just more than just a game for the University of Miami. When you're building tradition, you have to take advantage of every opportunity to keep building that solid foundation. Whoever we play tomorrow tonight, whether it's Villanova, whether or not it's St. John's, will have an awful lot more going for themselves than we are. In order for us to accelerate our progress, we have to be successful against this team. Tomorrow night's game will be very important for us.

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