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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2015Jeff LeboAntonio RobinsonTerry WhisnantHARTFORD, CONNECTICUT SMU - 74 MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, we're joined from the ECU Pirates by Head Coach Jeff Lebo, junior Terry Whisnant and senior Antonio Robinson, who both contribute heavily to East Carolina's 15 made 3-pointers, which was a conference tournament record. Coach, would you like to open with a statement? COACH LEBO: Well, congratulations to SMU, they've got a terrific basketball team and really proud of my team and these two guys sitting beside me. We battled our tail off, we shot the ball like we needed to shoot it to have a chance, and our defense was really good when we didn't turn the ball over, made some adjustments in the zone, they didn't score much in the half court on the first shot defense was excellent. But we had some turnovers that they got out on the break and obviously their size inside was a big difference. But really proud of my group and in particular my seniors, Paris Roberts-Campbell and Antonio Robinson, who was terrific today with a career-high 18 points. Q. Antonio, you had a great stat line against a nationally ranked team in your final game. Talk about you leaving it all on the floor, and were you looking for your shot today going into the game? ANTONIO ROBINSON: You know, shot was open, team has a job. A lot of teams don't play my 3-pointer, so today I was, like, if I'm open, I'm going to shoot it. I try to play every game like it's my last. If the ball's in there, I'm going to try to deflect to my teammates. Every day -- I always do it on practice, too. So practice and a game day, same thing. I try to leave it all on the court like it's the last game. Q. Terry, obviously you struggled a little bit yesterday offensively but coming out today and starting to hit your shot, can you talk about your comfortability today? TERRY WHISNANT: I just know my teammates needed me today. Like you said, I didn't shoot very well yesterday. Coach just talked to me, all my teammates talked to me because they want me to shoot the ball, so I came out today, wanted to be aggressive and wanted to get this win today. Q. You guys, great shooting the 3-pointer and missed the final 6. Was it just being exhausted, fatigued? What led to that? Did they change their perimeter defense? COACH LEBO: I'll take that one. Caleb missed three wipe-open looks that we'll take all day long. They were big ones. As a shooter myself, I don't know why they miss or why they make. I wish I knew that, I'd be doing something else probably. We got good looks and as a coach I think that's what you want. And we knew coming in we would have to shoot a lot of 3s to have a chance to win this game. We did have a long game yesterday. I mean, SMU didn't play, but these guys play three games a day in AAU, so back-to-back I don't think really bothers them at all. Just couldn't make a couple of key ones down the stretch and we got good looks. At least three of the six I thought were really good looks by Caleb White, just couldn't put them down. Q. Could you talk about trying to cover Markus Kennedy at the end of the game obviously with Marshall fouling out as well? COACH LEBO: Yeah, he's a beast in there. He's got great hands, he can pass, he can rebound. Their four bigs, they've got the best obviously in the league and not only can they score, all of them can score a little bit but they can really interior pass. Some of the best interior passing big guys, and I probably need to attribute that to Coach Brown, but they're hard to handle in there, no doubt about it. You've got Markus Kennedy, a guy like that and you can bring him off the bench, you've got a chance to have a special season. Q. Team played really tough in their first year in the American. Now that this season's wrapped up, can you talk about the heart of this team? COACH LEBO: Yeah, this is a huge jump for East Carolina basketball. We go from not being really relevant in any league that we've been in to jumping to a league that's seven or six or whatever it is in the RPI and we got seven wins in the league. That may not sound like a lot to most but if you look at the history of our basketball program, this is a lot for us. We haven't had that many in any league, maybe two or three times in the last 16 years. I think that we learned a lot about being in this league, how good the big guys are, how tough defensively the teams are in this league, the physicality. We've got to continue to grow. We want to try to get to the middle first and then try to creep our way into that top. These programs aren't going to come back to us, we've got to keep growing, we've got to keep investing, we've got to keep moving forward with our basketball program. It's not going to be easy but it's a heck of a challenge and I think these guys really laid the foundation to say, hey, we have we're not going to roll over and die here, we're going to compete our tail off and you better be ready to play, whether at home or on the road against East Carolina. I think we set that tone in year one. Q. For Antonio, in the zone you ended up guarding Nic Moore quite a bit. Can you talk about how you tried to contain him and talk about defending him? A.He's a great player, Player of the Year, he's kind of short, he's like 5'5 maybe. I'm like 6'4, so I actually got to get real low and he's really quick and he can shoot, drive, do both. It's like you've really got to be smart with him because he can outsmart you any time, it's really tough playing one-on-one defense with him. Just watching him play, I think he's a really great player so he's going to be pretty good after this season, it's pretty good. MODERATOR: On that note, thank you to the East Carolina Pirates. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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