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March 20, 2015
OMAHA, NEBRASKA
WISCONSIN - 86
COASTAL CAROLINA - 72
THE MODERATOR: Coastal Carolina is with us, Warren Gillis, Josh Cameron, Elijah Wilson represent the student body, Cliff Ellis, the head coach, is in the middle. We will ask for a statement. Cliff?
COACH ELLIS: First of all, tremendous respect and admiration for this Wisconsin team. That is a very, very good basketball team. I think the difference in this basketball game was the fact that their second shots -- their offensive efficiency is so good, but they really hurt us on the offensive boards. That was the biggest thing they hurt us on, but they don't turn the ball over. They spread your defense out, because they knock 3s down. They take you to the rack. They don't have any flaws offensively; they really don't. And defensively they're long. I thought our offense was good. We made a lot of -- we made some shots. We made shots we needed to have to be able to pull this off, but defensively we never could find anything, whether it was our man-to-man, whether it was our zone. Nothing was really effective, so you gotta give them a lot of credit. They're solid all the way through. They're going to be a tough out for whomever, I will say that. I saw 'em in the Final Four last year and wouldn't surprise me to see 'em back there again, but it's a crazy game. You gotta bring it every day, but they're very, very worthy, you could see them and Kentucky if they're opposite. I don't know how the brackets go. You're liable to see it. They're that good. They're good. We didn't quit, proud of our team. We had an excellent year. When we look back -- today hurts, it stings, it stings. But when you look at the whole body of work, I'm proud of this team and what they accomplished.
Q. When you are facing a team that is as efficient offensively as Wisconsin is, does that eventually start taking a toll on you?
WARREN GILLIS: Well, yeah, a team like this, it tests your discipline on defense, so you have to be sound defensively the whole game, and we had a stretch toward the end of the first half where we broke down on the defense and we had some turnovers on offense and that ended up being the difference in the game.
JOSH CAMERON: Yeah, they got a good team. They don't turn the ball over. They feed the post a lot and when the post don't have a shot, they kick it out. So yeah, they definitely test your discipline on defense; and they are a tough team and they got three big men and it's hard to deal with them. They'll be tough out. Congrats to them and it was a good year.
Q. To the players, as Coach said, you guys played well offensively. From what you wanted to do coming into the game, how closely did you follow perhaps the game plan?
ELIJAH WILSON: We did a good job of following the game plan that the coaches assigned for us, but what really killed us is the defensive end. We had a couple of lapses, and they killed us on the offensive boards, but other than that, I don't have any question about how our offense was played, just the other side of the ball.
JOSH CAMERON: We were very efficient offensively. We shot close to 50%, and you can't ask for much better than that. It was those three big men. We wouldn't keep 'em off the glass, and they just hurt us down low. They really hurt us. If you look at the stat sheet, they had basically all their points, so they killed us down there.
Q. Again, you guys knew Frank Kaminsky was going to be a handful. Was he even better than billed?
WARREN GILLIS: We knew how good he was from the start. He did some things that we expected him to do, but also we gave him a lot of extra opportunities without getting the rebounds, so they got a lot more shots than we did, just from the offensive rebounds. We gave them extra chances, and a team like that, who are very disciplined on offense and make you work, you can't give them extra opportunities.
COACH ELLIS: Well, he's an All-American, that's the bottom line. He's an All-American. He hits you so many ways. Where it hurt us, we wanted him to have to make the 3-point shot tonight. He did! So that forces you to go out. The 3s will hurt you more than 2s. We gambled with regards to saying make him make the outside shot, and he can, but you never know in a one-and-done situation what's going to happen, what was really the daggers when he was knockin' them down. And then you have to go back out, and it opens the rim up for other people. As good as they are around the block, it just opens up their 3-point shooting and made it tough. We tried everything. We did everything that we've done all year long. We pressed; we zoned, we manned. Nothing stopped 'em.
THE MODERATOR: Anything else for the gentlemen from Coastal Carolina? Gentlemen, thank you very much. Congratulations on your season.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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