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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 9, 2016Jim FerryDerrick ColterMicah MasonBrooklyn, New York La Salle - 88, Duquesne - 73 JIM FERRY: You've got to give all the credit in the world to La Salle. They really came after us. They guarded us well. The way they hold the ball. It's a tough team to come back against once you get down like that. Concern going into the tournament and this match-up was Jordan Price. Obviously when you have a star that has the ability to get 40 in a night, it's always scary, and I thought he came out really highly motivated tonight. He was 1 for 6 from three in the first half and then came out and just exploded the second half. We changed match-ups on them. We changed schemes on them. He just got in one of those zones. The defense really guarded us very well today, and you've got to give credit to La Salle. Q. DC, how would you explain the turnovers, the amount of turnovers that you had in this game and trying to improve on that moving forward? Possible future games? DERRICK COLTER: Credit to La Salle because they were denying Micah and all our guards, so I kept picking up my dribble, so it was my fault for doing that, doing dumb turnovers, but I've got to work on keeping my dribble alive, seeing the floor better, and making smarter decisions. Q. With both of you being guards and having that perspective, how difficult is it to try to stay in front of and to try to contain a guy like Price? MICAH MASON: Yeah, he's a great player. Tonight he made big-time plays. He had 36 points. We couldn't stop him, and they just made plays and we didn't. DERRICK COLTER: Just like Micah said, he can score in a variety of ways and he's got to contest all the shots I hope you miss, and he was on fire tonight. Q. The second half teams adjusted to you throughout the season, especially on your deep shots. What did they do different to contain you and what kind of adjustments did you try to make? MICAH MASON: I just shot to find open shots off the dribble, but they did well speeding me and DC up I thought the entire game, and that's where they forced turnovers against us. Like I said, I just tried to find open shots, and I made a couple, but couldn't make enough plays to get a win tonight. Q. You all had talked a whole lot after the St. Joe's game with gaining confidence after the losing streak being over. Was there a certain point in this game or when was that that you guys started to feel that maybe slip away a bit? DERRICK COLTER: You never really lose confidence in yourself. You've still got to believe in yourself and keep grinding at the end of the day, but we just fought hard and they made big shots, and we couldn't do nothing about it. Q. Jim, it looked like you had the game you wanted when you went on that run midway through the first half and had the tempo you way you guys wanted it. What happened? Was it the transition game they had that killed you? JIM FERRY: Yeah, I think Jordan Price killed us. We took the lead, and if I'm correct, he hit 2-3s back to back. We were trying to get the game to our tempo. Micah picked up two early fouls which affected us. Obviously Derrick didn't have one of his better games early got, so he got us out of a rhythm a little bit. But I think we got to half still with a chance to win this game. I thought we came out in the second half. The first five minutes, we played really aggressively. We got in our flow. We were getting misses and getting transition, took that lead. It was gone pretty quick. Again, Jordan really got into a zone. And we tried to extend it to them, tried switching on them, and the first half he killed us on his drives to the basket and foul shots. Second half he killed us on threes. When you have a great player like that, it's difficult. Q. You've mentioned the counter out there, Jim, in the second half when La Salle got I think 11 unanswered against you guys. After kind of starting the second half with getting those eight points, how much did that seem to kind of knock your guys back and take a little bit out of them? JIM FERRY: Well, it's just the flow of the game. Every game has runs. We made ours; they made theirs. I expected it to be continuous runs back and forth. I don't think it knocked our sails or whatever you just said. I don't think it did that at all. They made plays, and we had to regroup and make plays again. I think it was more of their consistent defensive pressure. They really guarded DC really, really hard, took away his lanes and made things really difficult on Micah. I think that was more of the thing that stopped us more than getting the wind knocked out of our sails. Q. Was this game as far as the turnovers and the points allowed just kind of what your season has been? JIM FERRY: No, not really. To be quite honest, this is one of the worst games we've played. We were close in mostly all our losses. We were very close and had leads in the second half. This game, I think, was very abnormal for us. Like I said, I think the first half Micah picking up two fouls, we turned the ball over quite a bit. We never got in a flow, never really got anything out of our forward position. But again, I thought getting to the half wasn't that big of a lead; five-point game at half. We were fine. We came out -- I thought we came out aggressively, got the lead back, and I expected it to be a battle back and forth from that time, but then they really struggled scoring the ball. We shot 34 percent from the field. Most games this year we shoot 46 percent from the field. Q. Similar line of questioning in regards to supporting cast opposite, obviously, DC and Micah. Do you feel they did enough? Why or why not? Other than Mar'Qywell, who obviously showed up with 10 tonight? JIM FERRY: Obviously, no. I don't know if that answers your question. We didn't. L.G. had nine points. Like our forward position, the 5 spot, we really didn't get much out of. Eric James played 29 minutes, three points, two rebounds. Some of these younger guys -- in a tournament play, you need to have guys step up. I watched some of the Saint Louis game. The kid Bartley averages three points a game, and he had 20. Again, I give that credit to La Salle. They did a great job guarding us. Q. When you're game planning and preparing for a guy like Price and trying to contain him, I guess in that preparation what's sort of the most difficult aspect of trying to neutralize a guy like that who does so much for that team? JIM FERRY: Yeah, you've got to guard him with five guys. We did a very good job with him. He shot I want to say seven for 24 in the first time we played him. We did an excellent job. We really gapped him. We crowded his space. We made him very uncomfortable. We contested a lot of his shots. Today I just thought he got too comfortable. It was somewhat of the same game plan, and then we had to make adjustments to it when he got so hot. But again, you've got to gap, you've got to crowd. He just got comfortable. Q. With you finishing 16-16 here, how much of an interest or desire is there to participate in the postseason in something like the CBI or that new tournament in Vegas? JIM FERRY: If we get invited to a postseason tournament, we're going to play in it. I think we should. These kids fought hard. They've earned it. It's an opportunity to keep working with your team, opportunity to reward the seniors for rebuilding a program that was rock bottom, and in four years you had a winning record. Something you've got to hold your head up. Right now nothing feels good. We're not even going to address that with the kids right now. We'll deal with that when we get back to campus. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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