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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: MILWAUKEEMarch 19, 2010Keith BensonLedrick EacklesGreg KampeDerick NelsonMILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN Pittsburgh – 89 DENNIS KRAUSE: We'll have an opening overview from Coach Kampe and then questions from the student-athletes. COACH KAMPE: We're disappointed, obviously, that we weren't able to win the game. We really believed we could come into this tournament and try and get a win. It was really something that we had as a goal, and we have a veteran team. I thought we had a chance to do it. Sometimes you get a bad draw. Sometimes you get against a team that was just too good. And I think they were just too good of a team. We didn't make shots. If you're going to compete with a team like that, finishes second in, arguably, the best league in the country, you've got to make shots and we just didn't do it. DENNIS KRAUSE: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. First and foremost, I would like to say to the Oakland guys, you all played very hard from front to end, especially at the end of the game and that's something I respect the most. To your point guard Eackles, I noticed something, the frustration going out there playing some really physical guards over Pitt. What was something that coach told you trying to keep the team in the game and keep your head together, even though it was tough with the refs? LEDRICK EACKLES: Physicality don't bother me. I love the physical play of basketball. I don't back down from nobody, and my teammates don't back down neither. We knew Pitt was a physical team. Coming from the Big East you have to be physical, so we wanted to step up and be just as physical if even not more physical. Q. Derick, on your injury in the first half, what do you remember from it and how do you feel now? DERICK NELSON: I was running for a rebound, and I just seen a elbow coming toward my face. I tried to get out of the way but I got hit. I mean, I'm all right. Injuries happen. I've been injured before, so it's nothing. Q. Keith could you talk about your match-up with McGhee? KEITH BENSON: I knew they were going to be a real physical team going in and he was a physical player, so I tried to hold my ground, get low, and match up with him and battle with him. Q. Derick, did you get stitches, or can you take us through with what kind of treatment you had when you were out of the game? DERICK NELSON: They just took me in the back and I got about six stitches. That was really it. Cleaned me up. They were pretty quick about it. Q. Keith, you saw a lot of touches tonight, 19 field goals, 16 free throws. Did that kind of wear you down just getting every possession, getting the ball, and obviously the physical play of Pittsburgh getting banged a lot all throughout the game. Just talk about that and the amount of touches you had, basically, every possession. KEITH BENSON: They had a lot of players to rotate in in the big-man position. So I like getting the ball so I was good with the touches. I just tried to be physical back with them and try to keep my endurance up. Q. Keith, could you talk about what you might work on this offseason to take your game up another level, if there is something specific? KEITH BENSON: I want to work on my strength in my legs and my jump shot and some post moves and just strength overall and conditioning. Q. When Derick left the game he was leading both teams in rebounds, having lift off to a good start. What effect did his departure have on the game? KEITH BENSON: I noticed on the offensive rebounds, some of the rebounds where he usually had he could have got. So it was mostly on the rebounding aspect that I noticed. Q. Ledrick, could you take us through your first experience in the tournament on this big stage? LEDRICK EACKLES: We lost. I'm happy that the team made it. I'm thankful for Derick Nelson and Johnathon Jones for helping us get us here. But I think we'll see Oakland University in the NCAA tournament in the near future. Players are taking it hard, and we want to get, start working out immediately so we can make it back here in the previous years. And as for me, myself, my status don't mean nothing if the team don't get a win. So I'm thankful for playing in front of all the fans. And I'd like to thank our Oakland fans for traveling and coming and watching us. Q. Keith, when Derick went out -- when Derick went out, it seems like there was, you got outscored 29-12 at the end of the half. Other than the numbers and his play out there, doesn't Derick add that intangible of the leadership, somebody out there that you've seen every game and that you depend on, maybe the mental aspect of you playing out there in the first half? KEITH BENSON: I think he leads the team well. And sometimes when we need to get going, he gives us that talk and gets us going. And that was missing out there. And his on the ball, pressure-on-the-ball defense. We stepped back a little bit from that and also the rebounding. Q. Derick, earlier in the year, started I believe 6 and 7, you battle-tested, played some really good teams. You hit conference in the Summit, played very well and get to the tournament. What was something you did earlier in the season -- and you come into a game like this and play a really good game against Pitt or play a good team against Pitt, what is something you look back in the earlier season against the other good teams, expected to look for coming into today's game? DERICK NELSON: Mostly in the beginning of the season we were trying to fill out lineups and see who we wanted to play. So we wanted to win those games. But we were mostly trying to get ready for the conference season. So today was a completely different aspect. You want to win. And we felt like we should have won this game. But we didn't make plays tonight. And if you don't make plays, you don't win. DENNIS KRAUSE: Thank you. Questions for coach. Q. How did you see the last ten minutes of the first half? Seemed like initially you had a couple of points to get a lead up to 18-13. And then there was a lull that you didn't really seem to recover from until that second half. COACH KAMPE: I thought that we had it going just the way we wanted it to go. I thought we were defending extremely well. We were on the boards. We weren't giving them second shots. Offensively, we were getting the ball in to Keith. And he was trying to figure out how to play against that. We don't see that a lot. And we knew it would take a little bit of time, which in the second half he figured it out and he really did a nice job of getting and spinning and going to the basket instead of trying to go through him, the guy guarding him. I really thought it was going our way. Then I thought that the thing with Nelson was a double-edged sword. And, sure, we lost him. But I thought the ten minutes that we stood there I think really hurt us. Because I don't know if it gave them a chance to gather themselves. There was pressure on them. They were missing some shots. They were struggling. They came off a game where they hadn't scored a lot. And I think there were some things in their mind there. And everything was going our way, and then there was that pause. And I don't remember who it is made a 3-point play and somebody made a jump shot for them. And it just started to get away from us. Not having Derick defensively and on the boards was an issue, I thought, in those last ten minutes. He was out there in the second half, but it just got away from us. I think that they were reeling a little bit at that time. And we credit them. That's what good teams do. That's why they are who they are. They took advantage of that and got themselves playing and their players played good. Q. Other than Keith and Ledrick late in the game, you didn't get much offensively from your other guys. Was there something that you thought they were doing that took away specifically like Larry and J.J. that just weren't allowing them to get baskets? COACH KAMPE: We didn't make shots. Now, are they bigger than who we normally play against? Yes. Are they more athletic than who we normally play against? Sure. But if you look around, watched the games yesterday, the teams that get the upsets and the teams that make shots, and they step up and players make shots. And Larry Wright made a 3 to start the game, didn't make another one. We were 1 for 10 from the 3 at halftime. We made three in the second half but the game was over when we made them. That was the big thing. We didn't really offensive rebound as well as I think we do normally, either, but they had a lot to do with that. Q. Obviously the elbow was a big play, a turning point. It looked accidental from where we were sitting across the way. You were closer to it. Did you have any doubt in your mind about it? COACH KAMPE: I didn't see it. I just asked the referee, Curtis Shaw, he went and looked at the tape because anytime anything like that happens, you have to look at it, because if it was something that nobody saw, they would take care of it. He said it was just an accident. After -- I think it was McGhee that had shot the ball. I think after he shot it, he got spun and his elbow just came down and it happened -- it was just one of those things that happened. There was no malice or anything by it. It's a physical game played by big boys. Q. Kind of compare this to your last trip to the NCAA tournament. I think you had the play-in game in that one and here you get a seed and you know where you're going and everything. How was the concept, the process different? COACH KAMPE: Anytime you go to the NCAA tournament from a conference like ours, or one of the big conferences, it's a relation. It's a reward for a great, great season. And so it was completely different in 2005 because we didn't have a great season. We had a great three days. We surprised -- the kid made an unbelievable shot. Cinderella, go to the play-in game. We're a relatively new Division I school. We play on TV. We win that. And we get to go play maybe the greatest team in the history of college basketball that year, North Carolina. And they were really good. We weren't. [Laughter] So we went into that game knowing you were going home. Today we didn't feel that way. Today we came here believing that we could win. And so right now it's a very hard thing, a really hard thing, especially for the kids to know that their season is over and they had such a great year. Like I told them, there's only one team that finishes happy. Everybody is -- all 65 teams, 64 of them are going to feel the way you do just now. It just happened earlier than we would have liked it to have happen. Q. Will you talk about the future of Oakland basketball? I know Ledrick and Drew Valentine got some minutes tonight. And Ledrick said he expects to be back here. How big was it for those guys to get some experience moving forward? COACH KAMPE: It's great to be in this thing. Sure. But we've won 86 games or something like that the last four years. So we expect that we're going to be good again next year. We better be. We've got a lot of good players coming back, but we lose two great leaders. And this offseason we're going to have to figure out how to make up for that. But talent-wise, I feel really good about our talent, especially our young kids. Valentine and Eackles. And we've got kids sitting out named Bader that we redshirted that's going to be pretty good. I like my team a lot. Benson will be back. If he listens to what he said there and he gets his legs stronger, I like our chances next year of being really good. Q. How do you feel your freshmen played today? COACH KAMPE: Well, I think Ledrick played very well in spurts. That charge call where he threw it up in the air and it went in, I thought that was kind of a little bit of a turning point call for him. But what I liked about Ledrick is down the stretch he just went and played. And I think we felt it was slipping away, and he could have been 35. And he stepped up and he made some shots and he played his heart out. So I like that a lot. I love Valentine. Valentine is just a kid that needs minutes. It's hard to get them when Derick Nelson -- you play the same position as Derick Nelson. So I was very pleased. I was very pleased with everything about our team. I was pleased at how hard we played. I was pleased with everything except we just didn't make shots. And that's the game. You can't beat a team like that unless you make shots. Q. In the first half you were substituting a lot. Maynard got in briefly. Eackles got in. Valentine got in. Was that just trying to find the right mix to get some momentum, get some rhythm going? COACH KAMPE: I don't think I substituted much until Nelson got hurt. And I think once he got hurt, then we were trying to find the right group to go. Because we were playing so good, I wasn't -- I was just hoping the game would end. You know what I'm saying? I was hoping that for the first time ever the lights would go out and they'd say "Oakland wins." But it didn't happen. Once he got hurt, we had to figure out what our best lineups were against their matchups, and that's why -- and at that time they made their run. And so we were trying to do things to stop their run. I even called a timeout. I never call timeouts. I called one in the first half. Q. Could you just give us a quick overview of the whole season, the things that you thought you guys excelled at and where you're headed? COACH KAMPE: I don't want to bore everybody here, so we can talk about it later. It was a great year for Oakland. A great year. Anytime that you can sit on Selection Sunday and be upset about your seed or something like that, you've done some really good things. To have an RPI of 51, ten years ago we were playing Division II ball and we built a program that can do that. And we have a lot of good, young players, so the future looks bright. It was a great year. It's sad to end, but I'm very, very pleased and very happy, and I think that 24 hours from now our players will have their chests out and walking around feeling pretty good about themselves. DENNIS KRAUSE: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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