 |
| Browse by Sport |
|
|
| Find us on |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 18, 2015
DAYTON, OHIO
ROBERT MORRIS - 81
NORTH FLORIDA - 77
THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Robert Morris head coach Andrew Toole and student-athletes Marcquise Reed, Rodney Pryor and Lucky Jones. Coach, an opening statement.
COACH TOOLE: Yeah, absolutely. Extremely proud of our team and the way we competed in the second half. I thought we were a little uncharacteristic in the first half in terms of ball movement, executing offense and kind of staying true to who we were defensively. And at halftime we let them be for about five or six minutes, and I think they figured out, as we came in as coaches in the locker room at halftime, you know they looked like they understood what they needed to do in the second half. And tremendously gutty effort by these guys. Execution of offense, coming up with stops, coming up with rebounds, really pressuring Florida Gulf Coast, not allowing them to make 3s in the second half. I didn't even look at the stat sheet the entire second half, but I didn't realize they shot 3 for 11 because they made their first two. So they finished 1 for their last 9, which is pretty impressive by our defense. And just really proud of these guys and happy to be continuing to play.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.
Q. Lucky, talk about the swing where you finally took the lead. Were you feeling lucky at that point?
LUCKY JONES: I wasn't really feeling that much lucky. But I just felt the game swing into our hands. The basketball game is full of runs, and I think we just took our time, felt them getting on their heels. We had to take it stop by stop and get the best shot for our team.
Q. Lucky, how much more satisfying is this season now that you guys are moving on to the round of 64, nobody's talking about a play-in game, they're actually going to be talking about an NCAA Tournament game in most people's minds?
LUCKY JONES: We're not that much satisfied, but we are very blessed and fortunate to be here. Just gotta give our hats off to this team. We fought through adversity. We was down 6 at halftime. No pressure at all. We just had to stick together and then they played probably their best basketball in the first half, alley-oops, you know, transition 3s. Beau Beech shot it tremendously tonight. We just stuck together and made sure we got the stop that we needed to turn this game around.
Q. Rodney, I looked at you in the second half and you had a big smile on your face. Looks like you were enjoying the game. What was going through your mind there?
RODNEY PRYOR: We made sure coming into halftime that we still have to remember this is a blessing to be out here so we have to enjoy the moment. And guys had their heads down and things like that, but we reiterated going out and having fun and enjoying it.
Q. Lucky, you've obviously been here longer. Than these two, new to the team, new to the offense this year really. What have they added, they were huge for you and all season tonight. What have they added as a scoring punch?
LUCKY JONES: They scored tremendously in different varieties, whether they're making 3s or step-back jump shots or going to the paint, getting other team's bigs in foul trouble. They do a tremendous job of just picking what the defense give them. They've been playing this way for the last six, seven games. So I hope they keep it up and we'll see what happens next game.
Q. Marquise, you struggled to find the bottom of the net early in the game. What kind of got you going in the second half and really found your scoring touch?
MARCQUISE REED: My teammates. They just kept talking to me throughout the game, kept motivating me saying we need you to score so we can win this game. So pick your head up and just continue to play your game, we're going to be fine and that's exactly what I did.
Q. Lucky, there's a moment in the second half when you guys finally had your lead in hand, where you looked at the crowd, you let out this big Tarzan scream, beat your chest. It was a very one-shining-moment-esque moment. What was going through your head and did you feel this was finally going right?
LUCKY JONES: Felt the game had turned into our hands. We had been struggling the whole first half. Really wasn't playing together. Really didn't have the great body language. But I felt once we got that stop that really turned around the game. I felt it and I was just proud. I let all my anger and emotion and everything else that I had inside my body I just let it free.
Q. Lucky, you guys went into the halftime down 29-35 against St. Francis Brooklyn the last time you were on the court. How much confidence did that give you knowing that you had won a game pretty much in that exact situation?
LUCKY JONES: That was the motto going into the second half. That's all -- Rodney, Kavon, Dave -- that's all we spoke about in the second half. We've been down six before in a hostile environment. Small gym, six points, two possession game maybe even three possession. We know we didn't play our best basketball. And all we had to do was just maintain, stay together and just go out there and have fun. I think we did that to the best of our abilities.
Q. Yesterday your coach said that it was almost like Duke had its own TV channel, that you couldn't avoid Duke. Now you're not going to avoid them. I'm just wondering, you've seen them -- I assume you've seen them play, what do you think now about your chances?
LUCKY JONES: I like our chances very well. At the end of the day it's a team game, no matter who they have on their team, no matter how many TV games they have. I love Robert Morris. Our coaches put in a lot of work. They know the scouting report. They make sure we know the plays inside out and we know their tendencies. So we just gotta go out there and believe in ourselves, have confidence, have fun and see what happens.
Q. You mentioned Beau Beech what was your approach to him defensively in the second half?
LUCKY JONES: Coach was screaming at me saying, can't let him slide by me. I really had to focus in on defense in the second half because he shot it very well. 6'8". High-arcing release. Fantastic player, can score in a variety of ways, but I know that I had confidence in myself and I knew my team had confidence in me just to make sure it got harder on him in the second half.
Q. With 8:50 to go Rodney steps up at the top of the arc hits a 3-pointer. You're down six at that point. Seemed like you couldn't miss a shot afterwards. How much confidence can one shot, one 3 like that generate for the game?
MARCQUISE REED: Usually when one of us hits shots like that motivates the other person to get going. So when Rodney hit the shot that motivated Lucky to hit his next shot or that motivated me. When somebody steps up hits a big shot like that gives us so much momentum going forward.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.
Q. Yesterday you mentioned with Rodney and Lucky and Marquise if they split the pie three ways equally it would be okay. They pretty much did that tonight. How important were they to your win?
COACH TOOLE: Obviously it's hard to guard all three of them. I thought in the first half those three guys along with everybody else that touched the ball was trying to make a play for themselves. And we had no flow offensively. We weren't moving the ball. We were going one past jump shot. At halftime we talked about sharing the ball, playing together. We had three assists and four turnovers at the half. We end with 11 and 5. Eight and one in the second half is pretty good. Eight assists on 16 field goals is what we want to be. I thought guys played unselfishly. I thought guys executed offense. I thought they had a nice flow of when to take advantage of a break situation and when to step it out to run offense. When you do that, when you have good players who work together you end up shooting a high percentage and obviously we did in the second half.
Q. Andrew, you talked yesterday about when you went to the tournament as a player, you wanted to enjoy it a little bit more. Given how far your team has come, knowing that they're going to get to enjoy a similar experience, that sort of opening weekend, in addition to this, how much more satisfying does that make this season?
COACH TOOLE: You know what, this was our opening game. And the city of Dayton has been absolutely outstanding. This is my fifth opportunity to be a part of the tournament. And this might be the best one we've had regardless of the win. Before the game was even thrown up, the way we've been treated. The way our guys going into restaurants, riding the bus, our hotel, people coming up to us, congratulating us. I've been in Boston. I've been in Providence. I've been in Minneapolis. It wasn't that way. And so you can't tell me that this wasn't our opening game tonight. And our guys really responded. I'm so happy for them that they were able to overcome a not very good first half to pull out a win. Excited to see what tomorrow and Friday will hold. And I think that's the only way we can look at it.
Q. You couldn't have stayed in your zone all night. But looks like you switched a little bit with a man or matchup zone. Seemed to bother them the second half. Talk about the team's effort in the second half.
COACH TOOLE: You know what's funny, we knew we were going to have to mix it up a little bit. I felt like they made a couple of 3s early and we turned them over a bunch and we thought if we could keep them up a little bit and turn them over, that that would kind of compensate for some of the 3s they might make. When we were able to -- after we turned them over a couple of times I thought we got a little bit reckless and started really gambling for steals that allowed them to get open shots. And obviously they're an excellent offensive team. They're hard to keep down. And obviously to come out of the half, they make a couple of 3s, they got it going down 13. And we had to try and change the tempo of the game. And I thought we did. I thought we did a good job of forcing them off the 3-point line. There was a number of times in the last 10, 12 minutes of the game where guys kind of raised up to shoot and all of a sudden our defender showed up and they had to put it on the floor and make one more pass. We talked about extending possessions, talked about high hand closeouts and making them shoot tough 2s. That's what we did in the second half, and that was very effective.
Q. First NEC win in the NCAA since 2008. This would have been the third straight year loss in Dayton. How important was it for the conference?
COACH TOOLE: Noreen Morris the commissioner was hard on me about continuing to play I relayed that to the guys and that's all it took.
Q. Throughout the year you've talked about your offense affecting your defense. Did you feel like at that run that North Florida made at the end of the first half that was another one of those situations where you guys weren't getting buckets and it kind of affected you guys defensively?
COACH TOOLE: Absolutely. Guys hanging their heads. Terrible body language. Guys felt like maybe they were missed on certain situations. We were shooting some shots on one, two defenders instead of making an extra pass. So our defensive effort lacked. And all of a sudden guys are jogging back, getting stuff in transition, moving the ball at a high rate where we're not active and not alert. That's what you get when you don't play the game the right way, when you play the game sulking and worrying about yourself you're not going to have success. In the second half, we had fun. Guys were clapping. Guys were smiling. Guys were worrying about each other. Guys were there for each other. We had a couple of charge takes in the second half. We had some big rebounds and deflections guys covering up every single opportunity that North Florida had to take a shot and another one of our defenders were there. And that's how you have to play the game.
Q. You've seen a lot of dominant scoring point guards in the NEC, from Marcus Burton and Dyami Starks. Was Beau Beech was a player you hadn't seen like and maybe the most nervous to go against?
COACH TOOLE: What we tried to do was kind of give our guys an NEC comparison of who these guys were. Obviously we haven't come across a lot of these guys in recruiting circles or in high school or that kind of thing. So we were trying to give them some comparison of who we were playing against. And Beau Beech was a guy that we labeled as a 6'8" Dyami Starks. And with his high release, he's always hunting shots. He's in transition, you gotta make him put it on the floor. There were a couple times I thought we did poor jobs of allowing him to get clean looks and other jobs he made really good shots. And it's hard with a guy that kind of size and that kind of shooting ability to hold him down all night. Clearly six for 10s might be a little much, but we knew he was going to get some. We just had to make sure he didn't kill us.
Q. In the first half, early second half, it seemed like your team was intimidated maybe by their length. But Marcquise Reed, who was struggling, finally started getting to the hoops and started getting hoop baskets, did that free up the rest of the team?
COACH TOOLE: What started up his ability to drive and everyone else's ability to drive we started to execute some offense. In the first half I felt like we were like dogs in heat. We were just standing there staring at the ball waiting for our turn to get it and everybody was standing there. There was no activity. There was no movement. There was no screening. There was no ball reversal. There was nothing. It was whoever has it, everyone's standing there and watch and hope you get the ball passed to you. In the second half, we had some screening. We were changing sides of the floor. And then we would go and attack. And the defense was out of sorts. And if we could move at first and then attack we'd have opportunity at great shots. In the first half we didn't move it. We just tried to attack and be macho and all of a sudden you don't come up with a lot of success.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
|
|
