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NCAA MEN'S LACROSSE CHAMPIONSHIPSMay 25, 2015Bryan ColeMatt DunnJohn TillmanPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Denver – 10 THE MODERATOR: Now joined by Maryland head coach John Tillman, student‑athletes Bryan Cole and Matt Dunn. Coach, an opening statement. COACH TILLMAN: First, I'd like to say congratulations to Denver University and Coach Tierney. Just a tremendous season in a lot of places, start to finish, the No. 1 team in the country. Certainly a worthy champion. Played well all year and played very, very well today, very clean game, every aspect of play they were excellent. Middle of the field, offense, defense, in the goal, they were tremendous. And it obviously speaks to the players they have, but also the coaching staff. So they did an excellent job, and obviously a shout‑out to the city of Philadelphia and Lincoln Financial Field. Just an amazing experience over the last four days with our players, something that they'll always remember, first class all the way. Obviously, it was not the end that he with want. I thought Denver outplayed us in a lot of facets. Yet that wasn't due to the effort. I'm really proud of this group. I'm more proud of this group than any group I've ever been a part of. If you're an alum or you're from the state of Maryland, I don't know how you couldn't be proud of just the grit, the heart, the resolve these guys showed all year. Selfishly for me they took me on a journey, an amazing one, from August to now, one that I'll never forget. And although we had some ups and downs, they got us on the cusp of obviously winning a national championship. But more importantly, just did things the right way, as a group that everybody can be proud of, on and off the field. So it's hard to say goodbye. Right now we're trying to focus on just maximizing and making the most of the time we have together. Because we know that the end is near. And that's probably the hardest thing for all of us, is just realizing that we're not going to be able to go out and practice anymore and we're not going to have many moments together. So tough locker room in there, but I love those guys. I'm proud of them, and they made everybody around here proud. Q. Bryan, comment on Denver's defensive execution. BRYAN COLE: They were great today. They obviously had a game plan coming into it. They executed it well. And that was that. I thought they were coached up very well. Q. Players, comment on how you're feeling right now afterwards. MATT DUNN: Well, as you can probably guess, it's a very disappointing outcome, anytime you lose it's disappointing. But it's not really about just that and we knew that. We've had, like Coach alluded to earlier, such a phenomenal journey just getting here. And we're not satisfied with just getting here, but the journey itself was so tremendous in that it's not an all‑or‑nothing experience in the fact that it's a failure because we lost. We're very disappointed. We're going to work very hard next year and use this as motivation. But the experience and the friendships and everything we've gained from this year is so valuable that it helps a little bit just enjoying the whole journey we've had. BRYAN COLE: I wouldn't say, looking back on it, now that I've had some time to think, I wouldn't say it's a disappointment like Matt said and Coach said, you get here, you get to this weekend, you want to close it out with the final win, but our leadership this year was great. And it started with our seniors in September. I'm really proud of everyone. Once everyone gets a day or two to step away from this whole weekend and kind of look back on how far we've come as a team, I think everyone won't look at this year as a disappointment. The weekend itself, yeah, we wanted to close it out with a couple of wins. But that didn't happen. But as Matt said, the relationships that we've built, the family bond that we've built is just incredible and it's something you can't replace after a year like this. Q. Bryan, talk about the challenges of playing offense against Denver's defense. BRYAN COLE: Like I said earlier, they had a game plan. They adjusted to things well. As we made adjustments, they did as well. They were just a great team, all around, offensively and defensively and in the middle of the field. So you've got to give credit where credit is due. They did really well today. Q. Can you talk about getting behind early and fighting an uphill battle. Bryan? BRYAN COLE: It's something that the coaches trained us for, and it's something that the season has trained us for in the fall. We don't want to look too far ahead. We don't want to look at the past, kind of just take it 30seconds, one minute, two minutes, five minutes at a time, just chip away. Whether we're in the lead or whether we're trailing or we're tied. We just kind of want to take it play‑by‑play and not look too far into it. MATT DUNN: Bryan pretty much covered it, take it one play at a time and you've got to give them a lot of credit they played consistently well throughout the course of the game. Q. Bryan, comment on the shooting and the opportunities at the end of the quarters there that didn't quite come together. BRYAN COLE: At the end of the quarters, we were getting some of the shots from the spots that we wanted. We kind of had a game plan in terms of shooting. We got away from it at times. At times we were able to stick to it. But you gotta give credit where credit's due. Their goalie did great today. He made a lot of saves, whether it being tight or on the perimeter, just did a really good job today. He was seeing the ball really well and you gotta give credit where credit's due. Q. Is it the game plan you're talking about? BRYAN COLE: Yeah, we just didn't execute what the coaches have told us, and that's on us as an offense as a whole. Q. Can you talk about some of the takeaways from the season. MATT DUNN: Yeah, there's a bunch of things. I learned a lot this year. That's a credit to both the coaches and all the players on the team, especially the senior class. We had a lot of great leaders on the team this year. And one thing that I really took away from this team is just how, when you really just sacrifice and buy into the whole attitude of the team, what you're capable of accomplishing. I'll be so proud of everybody on our team because I believe we had a whole team effort and that's what drove us to get to this point. We might not have capitalized when we would have liked to have today, but getting to this point wasn't easy and it just doesn't happen. And I learned a lot about the character of the players on the team and what it means to be a member of a team and really actually sell out for that team, and that's what I think our team did this year, and I learned a lot about all the guys on the team and what it takes to be successful next year as well. BRYAN COLE: To kind of repeat what Matt said, this season as a whole kind of goes to show you how far a team can go with the senior leadership that we had. I obviously came in with the class that's graduating this year. So it's incredible to see how guys like Charlie and Joe and Casey have developed as players and as people, and more importantly how influential they are to the younger guys, how they can help steer an entire team in the right direction by repeating what the coaches say and just kind of leading everybody on the right path. It's obviously tough to swallow right now, but like I said before, once everyone gets away from this weekend and takes a couple of days everyone's going to look back and realize that the senior leadership we had was incredible, and that's something that you can never take away from this team. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. Bryan talked about the game plan. Comment on how Denver came out was there anything unexpected out of that? COACH TILLMAN: No, it's a quick turnaround. You can change the poles. You can maybe change your sliding patterns, things like that. But it's pretty much what we expected. The downside of losing this game, you get Saturday night, by the time you get back it's 8:00 and you're trying to get organized. And you're trying to get as good a feel as you can. And I thought Coach Reppert did a great job of just breaking down personnel, schemes, things that we thought we were going to see, and it's what we saw today, but I thought they just executed well. We had a tough time getting leverage. We got stagnant off the ball. We weren't cutting to the pipes and moving inside as much as we could have. All that being said, we had some looks and we just, we just got stubborn a little bit, and that's probably the best word with our shooting. I thought, and I want to make sure we give credit to Ryan LaPlante. He played great. But he was good high and we kept talking about trying to change our levels, and it's easier said than done sometimes because you get the ball and sometimes you fall back on your instincts. And it got a little frustrating on the sideline because we kept saying change your levels, change it up, use the ground, maybe shoot off his knees or hips and we kept going back to it. So he kept staying on it. And sometimes that makes it a little bit easier for the goalie. But give the goalie his due. He played great. And I think if we had hit a couple of those and closed the gap maybe we could have gotten some moment. Q. With Denver scoring the first three, how did that change the momentum of the game? COACH TILLMAN: Nah, we've been there before. We scored four goals in 4:22 at the end of the Ohio State game, and almost, if we'd got one more possession we might have been able to win it in regulation. We've been down that road before. Obviously I didn't do a very good job of getting them ready mentally. And that's on me. I told the kids that, when we win it's theirs. When we lose, obviously I haven't done certain things right. And candidly, when you get here, just feel like you're trying to do everything you can to get your kids in the right spot to win, and I gotta do a better job kind of evaluating how we spend the time after Saturday night's game until now so we can put them in a better chance of being successful. Q. Comment on missing a player, needing more offense throughout the season. COACH TILLMAN: We kind of knew our team better than anybody. And certainly when you're going through the year, you can look at what you have and you build your team and your playing style based on what you have. Certainly we took some hits on our style of play, but we kind of looked at our group and we didn't necessarily have a group that we could get the ball and immediately had some dynamic, really fast guy that could put pressure on the other team. We certainly like our attack man, Jay Carlson is a really good finisher, and Matt Rambo is a really good player. We like Dylan Maltz and Colin Heacock, but if you have polls on those guys you are comfortable. When you see a team like Carolina with Sankey and Bitter, I'm not sure you ever feel comfortable. So we weren't the fastest team. That's just kind of who we were. Looking at the way we were going to be successful, we were going to have to really hang our hat on defense, good goalie play, facing off. And today we pushed the ball a couple times in transition, trying to get out. And we love to play just roll the ball out and get up and down, up and down, we're not built that way. We don't have those parts. So are you going to just play that way for the sake of doing it or do you look and go what can we do to give these kids the best chance to be successful. And it was a little bit more opportunistic, efficient, gritty, ground balls and those types of things. And we felt like if we played good defense people wouldn't pull away from us, and then we just had the scheme, maybe use picks and shoot smart. Again, I just didn't do a good enough job getting it done for the kids. That's probably the hardest thing for me because these kids made so many sacrifices and I just didn't get them there. Q. Comment on what you learned going into this weekend and what you'll take with you going forward. COACH TILLMAN: Similar takeaway from last year. We've been really trying to play more up‑tempo and play more people. And we kind of felt like we were putting ourselves in the position to have more depth. And then we have some folks leave the program. We have Timmy Rotanz, that played extensively last year and he gets hurt. And Lucas Gradinger, who has been very promising, he gets hurt. Nick Manis, he gets hurt as well. And all of a sudden we had to shuffle the deck a little bit more and some guys we thought we could go to we couldn't. So that shrinks your bench a little bit, and for us having that week it was really big. Charlie got hurt. He got hurt again today. And we just, we don't have the depth that we need and obviously I need to do a better job bringing that depth in. Q. Comment on what you said to your team after the game. COACH TILLMAN: Told them I loved them. I thanked them for the amazing experience that all of us had, the journey we went on, and I think ‑‑ people talk about winning a championship and that's certainly one of our goals. We know how much it would mean to our school, our state, our alums, and I'm determined to just bust our hump to try to get it for them. And I wanted it so bad for those kids because, Matt said it, we didn't have a team of superstars; we had a lot of kids who bought in and sold out. And that's what hurts. But it's hard to say goodbye, because the kids did so much right, they did it the right way. And that's the most important thing for me is if we're going to be successful and win a championship we've got to do it the right way, have good culture, have kids that go to class, do community service, that make a difference. And this group was willing to do that. And even the guys who weren't going to play on Saturday they were awesome on scout team. They were great with kids with autographs. They were on time. They were diligent. So I feel like the culture is pretty good. And I think the seniors left a legacy here and a standard that hopefully the other guys can follow. And obviously I gotta go back to work and start looking at ways we can get it right on the field, but I know we've got good people and good kids. And I think, I know, I'm proud of them and I hope all the Maryland fans and alums are and the school are, because they play hard for Maryland, they play hard for more than just themselves, and I think those are the takeaways that you want your kids to have. It's not about you. It's about the team. It's about something bigger than yourself and to make those sacrifices I always think it comes around to you, and that's a great way to live your life. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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