UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 19, 2022

Tom Crean

Men's Basketball Press Conference

Ole Miss 85, Georgia 68

Q. Hey, Tom. The situation with Coach Mason, is that something you can address right now, and what impact has it had on the team?

TOM CREAN: No. Obviously, it's an unfortunate situation that we're dealing with, but it was all handled correctly, and we've tried to keep our focus on basketball, and, unfortunately, today we just didn't play very well. We had our moments, but not enough. Especially defensively.

And then we just gave up too many open shots, so that's just what it is. Our practices have been good. We've worked hard, prepared well, practiced short. We just didn't play very well today at key times. Especially the second half.

Q. Yeah, Coach Crean, you have been a part of locker rooms for a long time. Obviously, emotions get high. Did you see what happened, and was it your decision to kind of -- the suspension and the actions that have been taken?

TOM CREAN: I'm going to refer everything back to the statement after making that first comment. Hope you guys understand and just leave it at that. Be happy to talk about the game, but I would just refer everything in regards to the situation we had to the statement.

Q. Again, just to follow up on your opening statement. When you said we're trying to keep our focus on basketball, how successful do you feel that was?

TOM CREAN: Well, we didn't win, so that was -- it wasn't from lack of work, attention to detail, preparation, or anything like that. We just didn't play very well today, especially defensively in the second half. And upon that, we've been missing some shots, missing some close shots. That hurt us, and unfortunately, we did not defend the way that we needed to defend, and it came to the dribble in the first half or when it came to the next pass in the second half. In the two hours of the basketball game, those were the biggest mistakes we made.

Q. Coach, I'm just curious. With a losing streak like this, would you say that the team's frustration tends to increase with every loss?

TOM CREAN: I would think so. Absolutely. That's just human nature, but I think when you come back every day and you come back with energy and get excited, and they practiced extremely well. If you ever walked in and saw us practice, you wouldn't look at that and you wouldn't pick the record. They come and they go, so, yeah, frustration in a game, frustration during the game, frustration after the game, absolutely.

When you lose, it's extremely easy to try to abstain yourself from the result or not attach yourself to the result or look for something to blame, and you just have to stay together, right? You have to stay together and compete and fight and get ready for the next day.

Q. Coaches tend to be pretty pragmatic, but is there ever a way you can could have looked at this going into the season and think, we're going to have six wins coming up to the end of February?

TOM CREAN: No, you never think like that. I also didn't think we were going to deal with the injuries that we dealt with early on in the season that affected us. But, no, I don't look at it like that. We just get ready to go every day and prepare, and even when we haven't won, I have never walked into the game saying these guys didn't prepare or work the right way to get ready to go. Hasn't been one day like that. It's a very, very good group of young men to work with. It's natural to be frustrated. It's natural to get angry or down or disappointed or discouraged. You just have got to work through that as a leader, and I take a lot of interest and pride in doing that as a leader, and it starts with me. So, no, I never look at records or look at what could be or what's going to happen. You have to stay in the moment of each day.

Q. -- somebody like Tye comes back to a place like Stegeman and has a game like he had today --

TOM CREAN: I didn't get the beginning part of it.

Q. Is it frustrating when a guy like Tye Fagan comes back and he has a --

TOM CREAN: It's frustrating that we lost, but he did a good job. He is a good player and -- he is. He played well today. It's not about any one individual. It's the fact that we as a team didn't play that well, and that is the part that's unfortunate. Not about anybody's individual contributions. It's more team-centered for me.

Q. Ole Miss had to go without their three top scorers today and shot something like 56%. What was the issue you saw in trying to slow them down?

TOM CREAN: We didn't guard the dribble well enough, and that created -- and they got hot. They got hot, and we had to -- we weren't guarding the dribble well enough, and they ended up making some shots, and they were open. We needed to do a better job of being in the gaps, control the ball better, be in a quicker close-out, and challenge it better. We just didn't do enough of that.

Thank you.