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March 20, 2015
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA - 79
BELMONT - 67
COACH BYRD: First off, we played a great basketball team. Virginia made the winning plays in the last three minutes that we didn't make, and they deserve to win. They were the better team. That being said, I'm certainly proud of our team's performance, I'm proud of their fight and grit and determination and the plays that they made, and we played a great team and I don't have the play-by-play but somewhere in the neighborhood of three minutes we had a real, real chance to win that basketball game and just didn't get it done. They did and they get to play Sunday, but this team right here's come a long way and I'm lucky to coach them.
MODERATOR: Questions? For the student-athletes.
Q. Craig, you had things going there from 3 point range. What did you see in their defense that allowed you to exploit that and can you just talk about the feeling you had shooting the ball today?
CRAIG BRADSHAW: I mean, honestly we just had a great game plan, we ran a lot of stuff for down screens and we had a lot of open shots. My shot felt good. That's about it.
COACH BYRD: You guys think that bank shot was an accident but honestly he does it all the time from right there. I'm not going to make him say for sure but I'm about 90 percent sure he meant to bank that, truthfully.
Q. Looked like when your offense was spreaded out, looked like you was more effective then. What happened?
MODERATOR: Directed for who?
Q. For the Coach.
MODERATOR: Student-athlete questions first.
Q. Reece, you knew going in they were awfully good defensively. Were they everything you thought they would be? And how did you counter their toughness, because you guys did make your run?
REECE CHAMBERLAIN: They're a great team, we knew that coming in, that the shots we normally get were going to come tough. I thought we did a great job, and there's only one stretch in the first half where we kind of got carried away and didn't run offense but I think overall we did a pretty good job of moving the ball and working in until we got some good shots.
Q. Evan, the free throws, 25 to 6, did you kind of feel that they were really taking it to you inside and how did you feel you dealt with their height advantage?
EVAN BRADDS: They shot a lot more free throws than us but I think it was just because at the end we probably fouled seven or eight times so there's probably 14 right there. They're big guys, big, tall strong guys and they're hard to deal with down there. Gill's a monster and he got to the line a lot tonight.
MODERATOR: Any other questions?
Q. Craig, when you hit the second of those two 3s and cut it to 62-60, what did you think, did you think you guys were going to win the game at that point?
CRAIG BRADSHAW: I don't think you ever think you're going to win the game against those guys, they string together some stops. I felt good about how I was shooting. We were running a good offense and they just made some good stops at the end, made more winning plays in the end.
Q. Bradshaw and Bradds, you're coming back next season how do you feel about this team going forward, do you feel like you'll be here again at this very place in the NCAA Tournament in 2016?
CRAIG BRADSHAW: I don't think you can say anything for sure but we have a really young team and Mack Mercer played great tonight and I'm really looking forward to his development. Amanze is the starter, we've got really young guys, I think we're going to be really good next year. It's up to us.
EVAN BRADDS: Like he said we are very young. I'm excited, we all work really hard, so we're just hoping we can work hard enough to get back here next year.
Q. The question is like when you had your offense spreaded out, looked like it was more effective then than it was when they standing in their position which they was getting the ball on the corners and at the top of the key and your guys was hitting the 3s and stuff and looked like your offense, well, that was a stop and they just went, you know?
COACH BYRD: Looked like bad coaching, didn't it? We got out in the first half and then a couple of times in the second half, we got out of the things that we're supposed to do and tried to make things happen individually and you're just not going to do that against a team that guards as good one-on-one as they do. A big play was the play we kicked it out and they deflected it and then our guy still reached out and touched it and it went out of bounds, that was a big play. And we actually got Taylor Barnette two or three really good looks late off of a throw back down screen kind of play and he made the shot that got us here or we wouldn't be here. But those didn't go down today and to beat Virginia, you've got to make plays like that. So we got a little stagnant every time, but there's a lot of great basketball teams that tried to score it good against Virginia and haven't been as effective as we have, so I was overall pleased with the offensive execution and performance.
Q. I was going to ask you about Taylor. Do you think he was pressing at all or do you feel that they were very familiar with him?
COACH BYRD: No, I thought he took -- he's 1-7 from 3 and I thought at least two of those were quick and long. He and Craig both had some early that were too early in the shot clock to take the shot they had to take. And then, you know, 3-pointer shooters are going to have their good days and their bad days and you live and die with it sometime and I just think he had a bad day. I don't think he was -- look, he is an easygoing guy that doesn't seem to be impacted much by pressure situations. If he was ever going to press, it would have been on the shot he had to make to get us here and he didn't hit the rim with it. So you look at any great 3-pointer shooter and they're going to have one 1-7 days and they're going to have 6-7 days.
Q. In the first half I think they matched you 5-12 on 3s. Were you expecting that kind of shooting by them on the perimeter, and what did you do to stop it later?
COACH BYRD: Well, I don't know that we did a whole lot to stop it. We talked about defense every timeout, all during halftime. Brogdon just had a really good first half and not such a good second half shooting the basketball. It looked to me like their shots from 3 just didn't go down. I think they focused more on getting the ball inside and I think that's a big answer to the foul shot discrepancy is that they had an inside game that we knew we would struggle with if they went in that direction too much.
Q. Can you speak to Bradshaw's day? He almost seemed like he kind of willed you back into the game when it was a double-digit lead?
COACH BYRD: When Craig plays like he did today and he's obviously a first team OVC guy and played like that a lot he makes us a way better team. He's fearless. He loves situations like that, that he's in. Who he's playing against and the circumstances in the game matter not to him at all. I like him. Plus he's just good enough, he's just athletic enough and simply good enough to play against defenders from Virginia. And frankly we try hard but we don't -- we don't get ACC level players very often, and he is that.
Q. Rick, you seem to have better success on the screen roll getting the ball to the basket maybe more than other teams have had. Was your 3-point threat part of that or was it execution?
COACH BYRD: I think when you have at least one big that can pop back and make it, they can't have nearly as much help on the screen-and-roll as they ordinarily would. Again it's funny but there aren't many -- I watched a lot of their games and a lot of people they played, I watched a ton of ball screen clips and there aren't many people at that level of basketball that really have, Wisconsin obviously does, but really have the bigs that can pop back out and shoot 3s. I know they were ready and I know they talked about it but it's one of the hardest things to guard in basketball is a big guy that can set a ball screen and pop back. You can ask Tony, but I think they did some things they haven't done all year long about switching ball screens with Nick Smith in for us that at least I haven't seen, and Taylor either didn't tell me the truth but he said they don't switch nothing. That's what you say when you're from Kentucky, they don't switch nothing. And Tennessee, I'm not throwing off on Kentucky.
Q. You pushed out to a really quick lead and then again in the second half when you made your run to get back into it, you guys were playing at a pretty fast pace, was that part of the game plan today to make a conscious effort to push it?
COACH BYRD: Yeah, you know, I don't think -- first of all, we like to play that way, I like to play that way. In fact I like to play that way more than our guys do. I'm always on them to sprint the floor. I think if you let Virginia set up that defense, get their defense set every time and say, you know, okay, guys, have at it, they're just going to shut you down. They're the best defensive team in the country. So I told them before the game, even if we only get 3 points, even if we only get 5 points on fast break situations it's going to be worth it, it's going to be worth pushing it every single time. But they're a great transition defensive team, too. If you look at their numbers on the year, very few offensive rebounds by any of their perimeter players. They get back and they wall off. They make it tough to get anything.
Q. Coach, your team showed a lot of resiliency and confidence even when they got down. Your 2008 team took Duke to the brink. Did you show them that game or did you even talk about that game heading into this one?
COACH BYRD: No, we really didn't talk about that game at all. I think most of our guys know the history of that game. This team again is not really as good probably as some of the teams we've had over the last several years, but it is the best I'm-not-going-to-quit team that I've ever had. We came back from double figures time and time again this year to either win games or to make a game of it similar to tonight. So I don't know, I don't know what that says. Again, we're not as efficient, as sound, as good as some of our teams, but never give up stuff, this team's got it.
Q. If you've seen a ton of their games you probably saw the Justin Anderson of February. Do you think you got the Justin Anderson of January here tonight?
COACH BYRD: Well, I think he's closer than he was a week ago obviously. He stepped back and made a 3 tonight and that had to make him all feel good. And when I say I saw a lot of games, to be honest I focused a lot more on their defense and let our other guys watch more of their offense than I did. I watched some of it for sure, but he's obviously, overall he's their best offensive player I think overall. But the beauty of their team is that you've got guys, Brogdon can do that, Gill can have a great game, what did he get, 16? You've got a lot of guys on that team that can score 15 or 16 points in a game and up can't just focus on any one guy. They're a better offensive team than they get credit for only because they're such a great defensive team.
Q. Coach could you speak about the youth that you saw in the game tonight, especially Amanze and Mack, and what they really brought inside the paint for you guys?
COACH BYRD: We are, we don't have a post player that's older than a sophomore on our team. You heard those guys speak to where we can get possibly. So we played all year long with guys making freshmen and young player mistakes in there and we made a few tonight that Virginia didn't make because they're a little more experienced and they executed when it came time to win and we didn't get it done. But I'm excited about our team moving forward a whole lot.
MODERATOR: One more question for Coach Byrd? That was it. Thanks, Coach.
COACH BYRD: Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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