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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 28, 2013Mark TurgeonCOACH TURGEON: I think we play a little bit harder on the road against Duke. Ran into a buzz saw. Duke played a great game. Though there were some things that we did better and some things that we didn't do as well. We didn't defend as well as we've been defending, so it was a little disappointing. But some positives moving forward with another road game on Wednesday. Q. Can you talk about the way Charles handled that environment there, and is that as impressive a game as you've seen from him this year? COACH TURGEON: Well, Charles was really good offensively. I think I said this after the game. He took it right to him. He offensive rebounded. He had a bounce in his step offensively. He was really good. But he was equally not as good on the defensive end. That's why his minutes were shortened. He's got to help us more defensively than he did in that game. But, offensively, I thought he handled it. He was ready to play. He wanted to play more. He picked up a couple fouls early when he was playing well and had to sit him. But, hopefully, can continue to play with that aggressiveness on offense and get better on the defensive end for us. Q. Wondering if you could share your thoughts on maybe a guy who doesn't get a whole lot of‑‑ I know everybody knows about Alex and what he's been able to do for you this year. But maybe you could talk about a guy on the team that maybe doesn't get as much attention. Maybe does some of the little things? COACH TURGEON: Well, probably Dez Wells would be a guy that's probably done the most for us defensively of guarding guys and putting them on the best player perimeter guy most nights. He's probably done more for us than anybody else. A guy like Shaq Cleare has been inconsistent, but defensively we've put him on some pretty good players. He did a good job against Howell. He did a nice job against Plumlee getting in foul trouble. Plumlee got a lot of his points late in the game against us in the second half. So I thought Jack did a pretty good job on him. So I think those guys defensively. Pe'Shon is doing a lot of things, assists, defending good players. His assist‑turnover was good. He was doing a lot of good things for us early too. Q. I think after the past two road games at NorthCarolina and Duke, Charles has said that he felt like you guys were, I guess in his words, trying to match the tempo of the home team and not really playing Maryland basketball by rushing shots early in the shot clock and not really running through the sets and running through the possessions. I'm curious if you felt the same way? Do you agree with him? Or I guess that may be just a reflection of the larger struggles you guys are having executing the offense. COACH TURGEON: No, that's a misquote. We threw the ball to North Carolina more than we threw it to us in the first half. We didn't get a lot of shots in the first half against them. So maybe we were rushing. That seems like an eternity ago when that happened. I thought we executed better. I thought we handled Duke's pressure a lot better. When we cut it to 34‑30, Nick took a quick shot. Didn't defend the right way. Gave up a weak‑side three to Curry and a break down. Then we threw the ball to Alex, threw it in to Shaq the next two possessions and guys just didn't finish. Plumlee had two fouls and we went right at him. We just didn't finish. So I disagree with him on that. That was more our defense than anything on Saturday than it was our offense. But in that environment under those conditions I thought we handled it. For where we are as a team right now, I thought we handled it pretty well. I thought we executed pretty well. Second half, got a little sped up, a few quick shots. They were hot, got things going. You can't do that. It was a little bit of everybody, but mostly Dez and Nick getting a little too sped up. Q. I know Alex only got six shots. After watching the film, do you think that was more a product of Duke's defense or something else? COACH TURGEON: It was a number of things. One, Duke did a nice job on him. Two, no, we just got a little bit behind and panicked a little bit offensively then he was just being too finesse, you know, fadeaway jumpers. Plumlee had two in the first half and trying to air ball lay‑up against him. Just things like that. A little bit of frustration on my part with him. So should he have touched the ball a little bit more? Probably so. Would it have made a difference in the outcome? No, absolutely not. So we've done a good job of throwing Alex the ball this year. Just got to continue to get better and get a little tougher. Q. I know you talked about getting to the free‑throw line this year. Do you think you did a better job of that against Duke, getting to the line? COACH TURGEON: Yeah, I think we've tried to drive it more. That is the nature of their defense. They get out and pressure and make you drive it. We were much more aggressive. The second half, we didn't get there when we needed to as much. So it's something we'll continue to work on. We continue to work on executing better. Our offense wasn't atrocious against Duke. It really wasn't. We did some nice things. We scored 64 points on the court. We just didn't guard them. They made a lot of shots. So it was more the nature of our defense on Saturday than it was our offense. Q. When you go with a team like Duke where it looked like watching it that defensively you wanted to shut down Plumlee and maybe Curry, and a guy like Sulaimon does a lot. How difficult is that for a team from both the standpoint of what their assignments are going in as well as how it's being played on the court to just trying to pull down a guy like that? COACH TURGEON: Yeah, we weren't expecting Sulaimon to come out and do that, obviously. But we were supposed to guard Sulaimon the same way we guarded Curry. So one in transition, one on a defensive mistake, and then they got a four‑point play just on good offense and found the shooter. So it really got him going. I thought we did a nice job on Curry. I thought Cook controlled the game, did a nice job. But for the most part in the first half we did a good job on Plumlee too. We just made mistakes defensively. The ball went to the post and we made mistakes. One, they ran a nice play. Set a good screen on Logan. Logan shouldn't have been screened if he was in the right spot. So we made some defensive mistakes that helped them. It's something that we really drilled on for two days, so that was the disappointing part. One thing we usually do is we usually dial into our defensive game plan and guard. We just give them credit because they were very, very good, but they also made some mistakes that got some guys going. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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