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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2015Oliver PurnellNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Creighton78 COACH PURNELL: I thought our guys came to play today and came to battle. Unfortunately, the thing that's bothered most of the year, the rebounding situation bothered us. As a result, they shot the ball slightly better than we did, 48‑43, a bunch of those were second shots. I thought we got the score kind of tied, went up in the second half a little bit, and I thought we were in a good position, but we couldn't sustain it. We took a couple poor shots in the second half. I thought that deflated us defensively a little bit. I thought we were doing a good job of defending the ball screens until about 14 minutes to go in the game, and we could no longer defend it well. We were kind of backing up into the basket and making them take an in‑between shot and taking away their threes. We were doing a good job with that. Then we started to come up a little bit and giving them shots at the basket, and they finally knocked in a couple of threes that gave them a working margin. I thought they played pretty good. They played pretty good. They stayed with it. We just didn't play well enough for long enough. We didn't rebound the basketball the way we needed to in order to beat them. Minimize the amount of shots that they get because they're a really good shooting team. Q. Do you think that the guys were getting discouraged when they started to go on that run? How do you feel like their mindset was? COACH PURNELL: I thought they battled right till the end. With about two or three to go, they kind of recognized that they might not be able to get it, even though we still had a little bit of a chance. They're down. They're down in the locker room, which I would expect them to be. Q. With this being another losing season, why should fans want you back next year? COACH PURNELL: I know why I want to come back, because I want to continue to rebuild this program. We've made some progress. But at the same time, I'm just like fans; I'm not satisfied. So I want to come back to finish the job. That's the way I feel about it. Q. Coach, along those same lines, how do you feel about the season as a whole? Considering it probably exceeded expectations in the tough Big East this year. COACH PURNELL: I'm just not satisfied because we got off to a decent start in the Big East. I would have liked to have finished strong. I would have liked to have won more games. We had an opportunity to win a few more games. And obviously, I'd like to be advancing tonight. So I'm not satisfied. Q. What would you want to improve on going into next season? COACH PURNELL: Defensively, we've got to be better, and that really centers around our rebounding. I thought, for the most part, we guarded initially pretty decently. But when you're getting outrebounded in double figures, it makes it hard to win. When you're giving teams a lot more shots than you're getting, it just makes it tough. So those are the two areas that jump out at me. We need a little bit more size, which we think we've addressed in recruiting. We need a few more good basketball players. We think we've addressed that as well. Got a commitment from a kid up in this area today. Four coming in for next year. So we feel pretty good about that. Q. Coach, they got to the line 30 times. Was their aggressiveness more match‑up based or just something you guys weren't doing defensively? COACH PURNELL: Their style is to go to the basket or to get threes. Once we started to take away their threes, they were going to the basket against our bigs, and we weren't doing a good job in the second half of protecting the rim. We were either letting them get all the way to the rim or fouled. Q. That was a good 10 seed that you guys played tonight, a good basketball team. You've seen Georgetown. You've battled them and only lost by a few points in both games. So how do you see tomorrow night's game between Creighton and Georgetown? COACH PURNELL: It's the second ranked conference in the country. There are only ten teams and they are all going to be good. Creighton's lost seven or eight games by five points or less, including their last one. They're a good team because they're hard to match up with. They shoot threes, and their little guards drive it to the basket. They've got size so they can defend in the interior. They are a good team, and they could certainly win that game. Georgetown's been playing really, really well. But I expect it will be a close game. Q. Coach,s what the big picture outlook as you look ahead to DePaul basketball? Is it the new building? Obviously, that's got to be a big lift. But what do you think the program needs, bigger picture, to become a factor in the conference? COACH PURNELL: Well, a number of things. We've got to keep getting better. We've got six wins in the Big East this year, in the second ranked conference in the country. We need to get more. We need to get better players. We're starting to recruit guys from the Chicago area. We have eight guys from the Chicagoland area, four from Chicago Public League. We want to keep getting more talented. We want to continue to build a winning culture and guys understanding, on and off the floor, what to do. Leadership of guys like Billy Garrett, those guys are getting older now and kind of understand what to do. We've just got to keep getting better, better players. The new building is very nice and something to point to and we can recruit to, which has been an issue for us. So I'm thrilled about that. But there are a number of things across the board that we've got to get better at‑‑ talent, experience, and a lot of that has to do with recruiting. Q. You say that you're going to have the new building like in another two years or so? COACH PURNELL: We haven't announced exactly when that will be done or when the shovel is going into the ground, but it's going in there soon, I do know that. Q. Basically, that would be upgrading your facilities, obviously, would that actually not help you recruit locally in the Chicago area, but nationwide as well? COACH PURNELL: Facilities are important. It's an important motivator for recruits; no question about that. So we're thrilled that's coming down the line, and it's going to be a state‑of‑the‑art facility as good as any in the country, and that will be a selling point for us. Q. You said you were not satisfied, but are you frustrated or disappointed at all that you haven't had the success that you've had at other programs? COACH PURNELL: Not frustrated, disappointed that we aren't better right now than we'd like to be, but that's been the case at every program I've been at when we haven't been along as far as I'd like to be. Of course, that's winning the championship. I'm disappointed. Not frustrated, but disappointed. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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