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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2015Dana AltmanJoseph YoungLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Arizona – 80 THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement and then questions. COACH ALTMAN: Well, I'm really pleased that we got here. I'm disappointed the way that we played tonight. We got outrebounded terribly, 17 on the boards. Our ball movement was really stagnant the first half. I thought it improved a little bit the second half. Disappointed with the way we handled the adversity tonight. Tough environment. Great environment for Arizona, tough environment for us. But it was just not a good ballgame for us and not the way we wanted to perform in the championship game. Q. Is this just simply the type of team that you cannot get by with not having much help from bigger guys inside? They're just too big, too long, too strong? COACH ALTMAN: Yeah, I mean, their size is definitely a problem. You know, Jordan had a tough tournament. I didn't think he was as active as he normally is, you know, and that's kind of our size. But I thought we all needed to battle on the boards, and as I look at the stats, none of our guys really mixed it up on the boards. So we've just got to do a better job. If we're going to play undersized, we've got to make up for it in other areas, and on the boards is one of the areas. Q. Did it seem like almost similar to the first two times against them which they kind of get a run and get some momentum they're tough to catch up to? JOSEPH YOUNG: Yeah, you know I feel like we didn't rebound the ball as well as we were supposed to. They might be bigger, but I feel like this team has a lot of heart and a lot of toughness. We weren't active. We started off great, but we didn't maintain, and we weren't stable on the defensive end and we weren't rebounding, so we have to do a better job because. You know, the stage that we were going to the tournament, we've got to rebound and capitalize on that. Q. What made it so difficult to get the ball inside and get Dwayne and Jared involved? Jordan, sorry. COACH ALTMAN: That's not a big part of our game. I just think most of our inactivity, we just got the ball on one side of the floor and it just didn't move. That was everyone. Everyone got it and had to test the pressure of the ball and dribbled it, and we just never got it moving. I thought in the second half we did a much better job of moving the ball, and our shooting percentage went way up because of it. We just took better shots. First half our shot selection was not good. The ball didn't get moved. We took some off‑balance ones, some very contested shots. They're a very good defensive team, and they definitely had us out of our offensive rhythm, no doubt. Q. Joseph, I imagined certainly the best team you've faced this season. No team unbeatable, but are they pretty darn close to being unstoppable? JOSEPH YOUNG: A pretty good team. Pretty good defensive effort, the way they play up and down, just T.J. McConnell did a great job tonight leading his team. It's a good team. Q. You sense your teammates getting frustrated there at the end kind of losing to them for the third time and the technicals and the flagrant? JOSEPH YOUNG: Just it was just I guess the atmosphere. I guess we were just trying to compete. Just trying to get the extra loose balls and trying to make something happen to try to get back in the game. You know, it wasn't no ‑‑ nothing mean to, just trying to get back in the game, yeah. Q. Joe or Jalil, does it feel better knowing that you can just shake this one off? You guys still have the actual tournament, the real NCAA Tournament, something to work on and kind of finish the season off with? JOSEPH YOUNG: Well, when you're a winner and you like to win, it's always‑‑ it always hurts to lose. But we have to shake it off because we have another stage that's coming and it's starting tomorrow, and we've got to build off of this today and we've got it learn from our mistakes because I'm pretty sure we're going to run into a team just like it, bigger. We have to have good practices and go from there. Q. Joe, how does facing a team in this environment where it's nearly a home game for them with all of the fans they've brought? JOSEPH YOUNG: Well, I mean, it's tough. But at the same time, your team has to be together because you have the five that are playing on the court, you've got your bench, you've got your coaching staff, and we weren't really together like that the whole time. I feel like we've got to get back together, and we will. We're going to make a change. We're going to learn off of what we did tonight and go from there. Q. Is it almost different, because Arizona with their size is giving you problems and you look at this and you look at the ten games you won before, is it different to pinpoint something here just knowing that's kind of the match‑up and what caused you guys tonight‑‑ or do you think you guys didn't play well in general? COACH ALTMAN: No, the match‑up had a lot to do with that. Their size and combination of athleticism is what gives a lot of people problems. The boards, I mean, from the very first possession, I think they've got two offensive rebounds on the very first possession. We just didn't get the effort on the boards that we had to have. Because getting outrebounded 17, not only did they get 13 points off those rebounds, but we were on defense so much longer. We weren't able to get out and run and you expend a lot of energy. Joe and Dillon, Elgin had played a lot of minutes coming into tonight where we're not as deep as they are. So when we had to spend as much time on defense as we had to, that was another factor that led to us not being able to get any stops the second half. Q. Do you consider this a good tournament for your team because of some of the nice wins you had or a bad tournament because of the way it ended in a lopsided loss? JOSEPH YOUNG: I mean, the way it ended, everybody hates to lose. But at the same time this is a young team and we've got to use this as a learning experience. We've just got to look at film and see the things that we didn't do, and obviously, we lost on the rebounding end and we didn't compete on the defensive end. Arizona won a lot more of the 50‑50 balls. We've just got to bring‑‑ in March, we've got to bring more of that. The team that's going to win is the toughest team and who is going to bring the 50‑50 balls and who is going to come in playing 40 minutes the whole game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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