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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2009Rotnei ClarkeJohn PelphreyMichael WashingtonTAMPA, FLORIDA Florida – 73 COACH PELPHREY: I thought that certainly Florida played better than us. There was a stretch there in the second half. Certainly wish them well. Good basketball team. I thought from our side of it that we competed. It was a lot like a lot of the games in the Southeastern Conference play we had. I think there was a stretch there in the second half. I think we tied it twice. But we missed some opportunities offensively. Couple of turnovers. Second chance points, even though they only had two more offensive rebounds than we did, they were costly. The three-point shots led to scores. So we've got a gap there, couldn't overcome it. I thought these two guys here, I thought Mike had an unbelievable game rebounding the basketball. He's done that all year for us. I'm very, very proud of what he's been able to do. Certainly our freshmen have had a big impact on our team. And Rot's one of those. So just didn't play well enough. CLAUDE FELTON: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. I think Marcus had a three to make it 39-38, and then Florida went on a 10-0 run. I'm wondering, from your standpoint, what was happening that kind of helped Florida get that gap John was talking about? It was a one-point game, 39-38, and Florida went on a 10-0 run to get an 11-point lead. I was wondering from your standpoint what they were doing to get that lead and have that 10-0 run? MICHAEL WASHINGTON: Basically, I think we weren't playing defense, you know good enough. We could have put more effort on defense. That's what I think when they got that run. ROTNEI CLARKE: Yeah, same thing Mike said. They executed well from that point. I know we missed a couple of plays. We didn't communicate, holding and switching on some down screens and cross screens. That led to open shots for them. Then they just executed well, and we missed a couple of opportunities. Q. You guys, another game where you were tied or had a chance to take the lead in the second half. You had so many of those this year. Where do you think you go moving forward with such a young team? How do you kind of close the gap there and be able to close out games in the second half coming up next year? MICHAEL WASHINGTON: Basically just like I said. At first, defense. You know, get better at defense. I believe we can close it up by doing that. ROTNEI CLARKE: We had so many games this year including this one that we were in down the stretch. I think it's not being able to -- well, obviously defense. But it's not that we couldn't sustain play and do the things in order that we needed to do to finish the game off. Q. I think you only had three points in the second half after a pretty good first half. Were they doing anything different or what was the difference do you think? ROTNEI CLARKE: No, I still got open shots. Almost every one I took was open. My teammates did a good job of finding me in transition or whatever it was. I just couldn't hit them in the second half. Q. There's been speculation about you maybe put your name in the draft. Can you talk about that a little? MICHAEL WASHINGTON: I ain't worried about that right now. So basically I'm looking forward to just coming back and getting better with my teammates. Q. After going through a freshman season, what do you think you learned the most and what was the biggest challenge for you taking the step up to this level? How do you think that will help you move it forward? ROTNEI CLARKE: Obviously, I need to improve, first of all, defensively. You know, it's not really the offensive end. There's still things I need to improve on whether it be reading pick-and-rolls or whatever it is. But I got open shots all year, as a credit to my teammates, finding me when I was open, I had a lot of experiences, ups and downs. This definitely isn't going to cut it. I know me and my teammates are going to go into the off-season and work as hard as we possibly can and guarantee a better season for next year. Q. I know it's been a disappointment around here in the SEC, but how disappointing is it to have a season they had? I know you're hoping to get something done here in Tampa and it didn't happen. MICHAEL WASHINGTON: It's a heartbreaker when you have a great season we thought we'd come up and make a run and get in the big dance, but it was just the downfall. ROTNEI CLARKE: Any loss is tough, I hate losing with a passion. Everyone on this team does. Including the coaching staff. This one, especially, because it ends our season. I know every person on this team wants a seed in the NCAA Tournament and it didn't happen. We couldn't make a run, and it's tough. Q. Quite frankly, you seemed a little ticked about the thought of losing. Is this something that you can use to drive yourself heading into the off-season? ROTNEI CLARKE: Definitely. I mean, it's motivation, but I'd rather be motivated on something else. You know, we can go in, remembering what happened throughout the season, the stretch, this long stretch we had in the SEC. And not let it happen again. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes. Q. From your perspective with that 10-0 run you had, like you said gave them the gap. They were getting some turnovers, what do you think was happening? COACH PELPHREY: I think a couple of things happened. We missed a couple of opportunity's. We turned it over. They made a couple of baskets. I think the offensive rebound, it was probably a smorgasbord of things that, where we've had moments in time. I mean, in the second half where it's a two or three minute stretch of play, kind of both sides at the same time. But I think, you know, we were struggling scoring the ball a little bit. I was surprised, it didn't feel like we shot 46% in the second half. But, probably the turnovers led to that a little bit. You know, Florida does a good job. They're so explosive from the offensive side of it. They had 11 steals in the game. You know, that's something that's hard to overcome from the offensive side of it. I mean, if you're scoring at almost 50% clip with 11 steals, and you'd like to get some of those back and score five or six of them. But I would say there was you more than one thing on there. Probably a couple things on offense and a couple things on defense. Q. Disappointing season, but do you feel like with all the young talent on this team the experience they have this season that you're close to getting back to the tourney and where you want to be? COACH PELPHREY: Well, certainly we're very excited about the future, the complete confidence and trust where we're going to be some day. Very, very humbled to be the basketball coach at Arkansas, it's an unbelievable place to be. Certainly with who I work for, our administration and the leadership, we know what's going on, and we know who we are. Coming into this year we wanted to establish our brand and play hard the system and the style. I thought our team, you know, I appreciate, there's a level of toughness here. Obviously, we need to play better, we need to get more pieces. But there is a level of toughness for always coming back, for showing up, competing and putting yourself in a situation where you've got a chance. And we understand the outcome is not what it needs to be. And we'll work hard and we'll get better. Q. You talked about adding pieces, what do you need to get in the fall to make a significant step? COACH PELPHREY: I think in general, bottom line, we have to recruit like everybody else does. As we get into our postseason stuff, we'll evaluate. We'll see what we need to do to add to our team in terms of the late signing period. But it's too early to be evaluating the whole thing yet. Q. Just listening to Rotnie talk about, he talks a lot about next year and being irritated and the way things went in the conference this year. What does the off-season hold for your young team and how do you think they'll respond from this type of end to the season? COACH PELPHREY: Obviously, we'll have a chance to get back and evaluate the whole thing. Tonight we're dealing with the SEC Tournament. So, I'm sure there's obviously things going through my mind, there's things going through their mind. There will probably be more stuff coming to my mind. And stuff that's on my mind might not be important in a couple of days from now. But tonight's obviously about the SEC Tournament. We'll focus on some of those other things and evaluate and have a chance to take a step back and look at it and see what we need to do to get better. I think first and foremost, the things we do know is the guys that are here all need to get better. There was some valuable experience given within terms of basically Stef and Mike Wash are the only two guys that played. Others played maybe four, five minutes a game. Even for those guys, the whole basketball team it's kind of a first experience for them. And they need to use that to become better basketball players. Any improvement we make is going to be largely on the shoulders of these guys because they were given a wonderful opportunity to compete at a young age. Q. Talk about Courtney's game and the job that Florida did on him? COACH PELPHREY: Yeah, you know, obviously, zone has a tendency to do that a little bit. But I thought he got nice opportunities in there. You know, had uncharacteristic for him, he didn't finish a couple of them. They got to him probably a little more than we anticipated there with a couple of turnovers in the press. But certainly you could tell it was a concerted effort on their part to try to keep him on the perimeter as much as possible. Q. With all the experience that the freshmen did get, and so much that was put on the plates of Courtney and Rotnie and some of the other guys. How do you think that experience will help them? It might not have helped this year but moving forward? COACH PELPHREY: I think it's going to be invaluable for Courtney and Rotnie. From Brandon and Andre it's yet to be seen. I think it's going to be invaluable for a guy like Mike Washington. And, obviously, the rest of those guys, too. But it needs to be significant. It needs to be significant in their careers and certainly for the University of Arkansas. Q. Mike was obviously able to stay out of foul trouble. Talk about his game, career highs and boards and 15 points for you? COACH PELPHREY: He had an outstanding halftime, very, very active. Florida doesn't have anybody to come at him in terms of some of those things. Though I think they're getting better there. Tie us has had a very good year. You know, if you told me we'd had Mike for 35 minutes and he'd get 15 points and 18 rebounds, I would have felt pretty good about that. Just couldn't defend them well enough in the second half. 53 points is probably too many. 53% from the field is probably too high. Which, in turn, kind of kept us out of transition for some easy baskets. But I thought his performance was something that we've grown accustomed to, and that we like to see. Q. I know it's been a tough SEC season, the players alluded to how disappointing it is when you've got new life in the tournament. Could you talk about that? COACH PELPHREY: Well, everybody's got three seasons. You've got non-conference schedule, you've got your SEC play. Then you've got postseason. Postseason for us this year is the SEC Tournament where we had a chance to compete for an automatic qualifier, and this was a big deal. Probably a little bit of added hope in terms of everybody talked about the league being down or whatever, and there not being a couple of teams that kind of separated them CEFs to a certain degree, and the fact that last year, you know, Georgia was able to get the four games. So I think all of that played into it. But at the end of the day you can't play four games, you've got to play one. And we understood and had tremendous respect for how good Florida is and what a big challenge that was going to be for us. Tonight it was too much for us to overcome. End of FastScripts |
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