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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2015Donnie JonesB.J. TaylorHARTFORD, CONNECTICUT EAST CAROLINA – 81 MODERATOR: We have with us right now Coach Donnie Jones of the UCF Knights, and B.J. Taylor and Adonys Henriquez. First game of the tournament, took it the extra frame against newcomer East Carolina. Do you have an opening statement for us, Coach? COACH JONES: First of all, I was proud how our kids competed, especially in the second half. Got off to, I thought, a good start early, they had a run there, East Carolina did, and got up on us 15 or 16, whatever it was. I was really proud of how our kinds fought back to get back into the game. Cut it to 8 at halftime, and then I thought the second half we came out and played with some grit and some toughness in the second half to give us a chance to get to overtime, and cut down a couple huge possessions down the stretch, we had a couple balls there at the one point game. Two offensive rebounds there really hurt us in that last minute, but we still had a chance at the end to win the game and obviously fell short. I was proud of our kids' effort tonight, other than obviously losing, but our seniors Kasey Wilson and Myles Davis, both those guys have played their last game here at UCF, and just appreciate the way those guys have handled themselves on the floor as well as off the floor, they have been a huge part of help growing our culture at UCF. I want to thank both those guys with that and obviously congrats to East Carolina on the win, but it's a tough one tonight and a hard fought basketball game. MODERATOR: Questions from the floor? Q. Coach Jones, big night from B.J. Tyson and also B.J. Taylor. Can you talk about the poise of these young guys coming in and how excited you are for the league as freshman to come in and play like that? COACH JONES: Yeah, obviously B.J. Tyson is a good player for them. He's Sixth Man Of The Year, I think, for the league. He gives them energy, he can put the ball on the floor and score. He had 19 points tonight. He's a tough match-up. Obviously, both these guys beside me here, I've asked so much from them this year as a coach, as freshman, and those guys have been as consistent as anybody not only on our team but any probably two freshmen in the country. Both of these guys have come in and we've asked a lot from them from an offensive standpoint and a defensive standpoint, and they've been two of the most coachable guys that I've ever coached. Every day in practice with their work ethic, their attitude, their belief in coming here to help change this culture as we move forward at UCF. These guys have bought in and committed to that. That's been huge for our program and that is why they continued to get better is they're coachable. Obviously I think the future is very bright not only for them but for our program as we bring these guys back next season. Q. Coach, your team was able to come back on a 15 to 6 run to end the first half. What were you able to tell the guys when you called those timeouts and there's five minutes left in the game in the first half to be able to get them to get their motivation back and basically charge on? COACH JONES: Yeah, just keep playing defense, just thought defense has been the thing that we've really been trying to get better at. I think sometimes we as a young group sometimes we get focused and just not these guys as young, talking about the other guys on our team, too, is that we sometimes let our offense dictate our defense, and our defense needs to dictate our offense so just keep getting stops. I thought we come down, we played unselfishly, we were able to get some shots against that zone, which is what we struggled with the previous times that we played them. Both these guys hit big shots against the zone, and I thought defensively we got some stops which gave us a chance to get out in transition, get some buckets early on and get us back in the game, but my biggest thing I'm saying in the timeouts was to play hard, play with toughness, play unselfish and try to get this thing under 10 if we could, and we got it to 8 coming in to the half. Q. Take us through the last play and what was supposed to happen, it seemed like Kasey Wilson went up for the shot, he seemed a little bit uncomfortable with that position. COACH JONES: We were running a double drag action out of it, and we wanted to come off two screens with B.J. off of it, and look to pop Adonys to the corner to stretch it and then off that, Casey was going to pop, and we were going to try to turn the corner but they switched everything off of it. We got jammed up out front and we ended up having to take a tough shot at the end. Q. For B.J., you had a pretty strong second half, what did you learn from playing ECU twice throughout the year, one pretty close game towards the end of the season. What do you learn from those games that really pushed you today? B.J. TAYLOR: I think I learned a lot from all the games I played this year, just going against all the different teams in the league, watching film on all those teams, you know, we watched a lot of film on ECU leading up to this game obviously and just a lot of points that Coach brought out and told me, and a lot of points that I could see myself and just watching film all year. I saw a lot of different teams do a lot of different stuff so I think it was just a great learning experience. MODERATOR: All right, gentlemen, thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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