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NCAA MEN'S LACROSSE CHAMPIONSHIPSMay 27, 2012Tommy BryantJ.B. ClarkeJackson DeckerBOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Dowling – 11 THE MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone. We have head coach J.B. Clarke, to his right, Jackson Decker, and on the end, Tommy Bryant.  We'll go with an opening statement from the head coach, and then take questions. Coach, an opening statement? J.B. CLARKE: Couldn't be more proud of our program. These guys to the right and their fellow seniors. It was a great run. We ran into a very good team today. It's hard to be sitting here first. Wish we were here second. But one of our sayings pregame every day is if we should lose, we'll stand by the road and cheer as the winners go by. Today we had to do that and we haven't had to do it much. That is credit to our senior class. This is a classy bunch of individuals and very good student‑athletes that represented our institution extremely well this whole year. I couldn't be more proud of them today. We didn't play perfectly, but we fought awful hard. So I'm very proud of this group. Q. Jackson, can you talk a little about in terms of the slow start early in the game and you guys getting that going? JACKSON DECKER: It seems like they just came out ready to go. They were really into the game right away. I think we were a little shocked and awe. But we got back into it. Hard fought, and fought hard. We had a great team this year, just a slow start. That's about it. Q. Was it particularly tough today and hot? Once you got behind, is it hard to play from behind like that? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: We're from SouthCarolina. We play in 85, 90° weather every day. On a big stage you have to come out and be ready to go. Q. As an aside, where did you go to school? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, I went to high school there. Q. Any thoughts about it? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: He was my best friend growing up. Q. Were you here watching yesterday? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: No, we were watching from the hotel room, but we're in the same hotel. Q. I was just wondering how much of the familiarity having played a few weeks ago played in this game as far as knowing them or whether there was any extra motivation or anything like that? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: It's hard to beat a good team twice in a year. We played them a couple weeks ago. We had a really good game last time and everything was going our way. Today they just outplayed us. Q. Can you talk a little about what they were able to do early offensively? It kind of looked like you had some success? TOMMY BRYANT: Yeah, they had some success with the face‑off with the twins. We just were outworked a little bit in the beginning. Came back and fought at the end. Q. Either of you have any thoughts about their player, Vito, and all the goals he scored and the game he had? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, he had a great game. Of course, he had to have a big game, and he did. He's a great player. You could see by all his highlights today. He's definitely a tough, tough player today to play against. I know that. So congrats to him for having a good game. Q. Coach, if the day had come when you guys did lose you would stand by and walk. It got chaotic with the celebration, but you made it a point to stay in line for handshakes. I was wondering what the message was behind that. J.B. CLARKE: We played them in the regular season. Played the Sportsmanship Cup. At the end of the day what we do as coaches in college lacrosse and NCAA is we're educators and we're teachers. Our guys tried really hard. It was incredibly disappointing for them to lose that game today, but we have to stand by the road and cheer as they go by. We knew at the end they deserved to win because they wanted it more than we did. You have to have your guys stand tall and also pay homage to the team that beat you today. It's hard to do. It's hard for me to do. I'm very proud of the way our guys handled it at the end of the game. They fought. They didn't want to lose. They came back and shook their hands, looked them in the eye and said congratulations to them. Q. (No microphone)? J.B. CLARKE: I wanted them to have a celebration. I know there was a great celebration between our game and their game. So I wanted them to have their time. So I wanted to really get my guys out of there so that do you living could have their time. Q. What do you think the difference was for this game, especially last game had you that big second quarter. From a more technical end? J.B. CLARKE: Geez, they did a better job of stopping our transition. They went up. Second quarter, I'd like to tell you that I drew something up in the second quarter and made some amazing adjustments, but I didn't. Our guys took advantage of their mistakes. Really pushed transition, won a lot of face‑offs in that time period. We capitalized on their mistakes more than anything in that second quarter. That's why when folks were asking me the last couple weeks or the last week how I felt about playing do you living, it was great because we didn't have to learn who do you living was. But I knew it was going to be a very tall order. I knew the first quarter was even last time, and the second half was a 3‑2 ballgame. We just happened to have that 15 minutes. Dowling is incredibly well coached, and I knew they were going to try to take our transition away. My hopes were we'd be able to win the ground ball wars and we did in that first game. It was 22‑9 in the second half of the first game on ground balls. If you do that, you can create transition in spite of what they're doing to try to stop your transition. I think that was the biggest difference is we just couldn't get our transition goals. Q. Can you talk a little about the sequence at the end there? You guys had a look and a good attempt. I almost couldn't see if the goalie made a save or a defenseman made a save. Was that the look you were going for in that spot? J.B. CLARKE: Yeah, you want to get the ball to your best players in those situations. Shayne, Riley, Jackson Decker, those guys have been our guys all year. You have to put the weight on the shoulders of the guys that brought you here. You got to dance with who brought you. We got one of the looks we would have taken, certainly. You feel horrible for a guy who misses the last shot, but it's not about the last shot. We missed a lot of shots today. The poor young man feels horrible right now. Get back there and give him a hug. Q. On the own goal for lack of a better term, did it seem ominous? J.B. CLARKE: Yeah, it did. There is no other way to put it. The ball bounces funny ways. We had some games this year that they went our way and others that they didn't. We really felt like fortune favors the bold. It's a term we use a lot down the stretch here. We wanted to be bold. I'm not sure we were very bold early on. I was surprised. We played tentatively early, and it kind of surprised me. But you've got to make your own fortune, and we didn't do that enough today. Q. (No microphone) he had a pretty good game? J.B. CLARKE: He did. He's a terrific player. You need guys like that to rise up in the championship games. Last week it was Randy and three goals and an assist. Probably somebody they hadn't scouted against much and weren't too worried about. Everyone worried about Shayne Jackson and Jackson Decker and guys like that. So sometimes other guys rise up. For them we were very concerned about their first midfield. We knew that DeMola was good down there on that left side. What he did was he recognized that we were doing a good job on their middies and he took over the game. That's what champions do. They find a guy that does that. So to that young man and his coaching staff for recognizing that, they took advantage of it. It was quite a performance. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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