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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: PHOENIXMarch 27, 2008Joe AlexanderDa'Sean ButlerBob HugginsPHOENIX, ARIZONA THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes first. Q. Da'Sean, you guys looked to have control of the game in overtime. You are up by 6, the last three minutes I think you were outscored 14-3. Can you comment on what went on during those last three minutes and how that run -- how they were able to make that run? DA'SEAN BUTLER: I would just say like a lot of miscommunication and people just not getting where they are supposed to be. They got a lot of transition points and people didn't get it back, like myself. And they made plays toward the end of the last few minutes and turned it into overtime. If you just continue to let them make plays like that, especially in OT, it obviously kills us and that's how we lost the game. Q. Joe, when you are sitting on the bench in overtime, what's going through your mind and what was the feeling like when you're there? JOE ALEXANDER: I was just trying to stay calm. Obviously I wanted to play really bad. And I was just doing what I could do to keep cheering on my teammates, yeah. Q. Can you talk about how much it hurt not being able to make any 3s tonight? 1-11. I'm sure you have done better this season on that. JOE ALEXANDER: I don't know what we are shooting on the year but it is definitely better than 10%. In a close game like that, if we would have shot, you know, even half of what we normally shoot, it would have made a big difference. So it definitely hurt us a lot. DA'SEAN BUTLER: It definitely hurt us a lot, especially not having Al and Darris making big shots. Regardless, the 3s, we still had the opportunity to win the game several times and it just comes down to everybody doing their job and at the end of the day everybody didn't finish. Q. For either of you, talk about especially down the stretch in regulation, you had a lot of chances. I remember that one possession you had four chippies right at the bucket and couldn't get any to go. Talk about the frustration of not getting it done in regulation and if that affected y'all going into overtime. JOE ALEXANDER: I don't think it was too frustrating. I thought we did get it done in regulation. Besides in the first half we had a big deficit, I thought we came back and kept fighting. The chippies aren't real frustrating. Getting the offensive rebound, having another opportunity gets you pumped up. I wasn't too frustrated by it. Q. Joe, at the end of the game I think Burrell came up and said something to you. Do you care to share? What was that moment like for you there at the end? JOE ALEXANDER: He was just trying to get into my head for the free throw. He didn't. I just missed it. Q. Simple case of failure to execute some fundamentals down the stretch? COACH HUGGINS: We're up 6 and they beat us down the floor. Cuts it to 4. We didn't do a very good job at the foul line. Lavender hit a 3 to tie the game. We didn't do what we'd been doing the whole game. Yeah, we had some breakdowns. We had some breakdowns and they made big plays. You have to give them credit. They made big plays. Q. You've had several games at the end where you had a chance to extend leads on the foul line and didn't get it done. Is that one of the more frustrating things for a coach? COACH HUGGINS: I was more frustrated about us not getting back on defense than I was about -- you are going to miss free throws. That happens. Probably shouldn't miss as many as what we did today, but you're going to miss some. And it wasn't just -- I think it is easy probably to point the finger at Wellington or Joe Mazzulla because they struggled down the stretch. But Alex missed one. Joe missed one. It wasn't -- I mean, the morale is we played pretty well, we just didn't finish it. Q. What happened on the inbounds play there in overtime with 2 seconds left on the shot clock? Was there a switch to try to prevent a lob or what happened that left their guy -- COACH HUGGINS: We knew they were going to back screen us, 2 seconds to go. Somebody fell asleep, I guess. I don't know. I'd have to look at it. We jammed up what they wanted to run and somebody away from the ball fell asleep. Q. You came out, were you getting the shots you wanted, or just not going down? Were you having trouble getting the shots against their defense? COACH HUGGINS: We tried to do some -- we tried to do something that we haven't done, in all honesty. And to kind of take advantage of some of mismatches we thought we had. We were just too stagnant, stood around too much. End of FastScripts |
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