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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 9, 2016John GianniniJordan PriceCleon RobertsBrooklyn, New York La Salle - 88, Duquesne - 73 JOHN GIANNINI: I just thought we played with great energy. I thought we defended. I thought we shared the ball. I thought we rebounded. I thought we played a really good game. We played like a team that wanted to play again tomorrow. We played like a team that did not want to get on a bus and go back home. We played like a team that sacrificed a lot through the off-season and worked really hard throughout the year and wanted to have a positive experience here at the end. So again, I talk a lot about the mental side of it, and I thought mentally we were really determined today. We did a great job against a good team that was also motivated. Q. Jordan, you passed Kobe Bryant's father on the school's all-time scoring list. What do you think about that? JORDAN PRICE: That's a great accomplishment, but this week is not for personal goals, it's for the team goals, and that's out to win a championship. But I appreciate you telling me that, though. Q. You didn't make any of the goals towards these teams, so were you personally motivated? JORDAN PRICE: Honestly, I had no thoughts about that. Didn't really even know about it, but this week is for my team. That's it, and that's all I'm focused on. Q. Jordan, in a stretch like that early in the second half where you have three straight threes and then the fourth go in and out, do you pick up a moment of tunnel vision? JORDAN PRICE: You know, my teammates, they just found me in the right position. I was open. They just found me. It wasn't nothing about tunnel vision or anything. It was just good ball movement, and I was happy to be open three times in a row. Q. You guys hadn't won a game away from your home in a long time, and yet you played like this tonight. What went into that? CLEON ROBERTS: I mean, that was a big part of this game. We knew we struggled on the road, so we prepared very hard for this game. We knew we lost to them pretty bad. We knew we had to come and fight. Q. Was there anything that you all picked up from that first match-up there with Duquesne back in late January that y'all were able to apply with some success today? CLEON ROBERTS: Yeah, we knew that they liked to push the ball in transition, so the ball goes up, everybody got to get back on D. They're a pretty good three-point shooting team. We know Mason spaces the shooters, so we knew we had to have a hand up at all times. JORDAN PRICE: Picking up on what Cleon said, our main focus was transition and our point guard and shooting guard was our main focus. The first game we were down by three with 10 minutes to go. We just gave a lot of guys who were in shot. We didn't let up, and we just shot some. Q. That was a season high in points for you guys, not just winning the game, but winning like that, did you see something like this in them? JOHN GIANNINI: Yeah, in October I did. I mean, we didn't see it as much during the year, and I'll be a little puzzled by that. But they were just -- I've said it all year that they've been great kids, and what I mean by that is they come in early to do extra shooting, they stay late to shoot more, they're good in the weight room, they're great academically, they never get in trouble. They like each other. They care about each other. They're coachable. There's something I would say in terms of confidence and competitiveness that we showed more of today. We've always had those great qualities, but today I think they really believed that they could advance in this tournament, and they really went after Duquesne. They were really competitive. There's a difference between working hard and competing. Working hard is putting your hours in and putting your time in. Competing is looking at that guy lined up across from you and saying, he's not going to score or I'm going to get through this screen or this rebound is mine. Hey, they made a run, but we need to make our run now, the whole refuse to lose thing. And I think we're learning that competitiveness a little bit more, and it's nice to see the confidence, too. Q. In the early stages of the second half, it felt like a three-point shooting contest between Jordan and Micah. What did you do defensively that maybe frustrated Micah more afterwards? JOHN GIANNINI: Well, Johnny Shuler left it all out on the court. Johnny chased him all over the place and made him work for absolutely everything. And after he makes a bunch of those threes, he did make six of them and he did have 26 points, and eventually you kind of catch on. Even the other guys realize that you kind of catch on and can't let this guy have any space. We call him in our program, and there's very few of them, a freak shooter. He can shoot from 30, 40 feet. He can get a shot off in a split second. He's not a normal shooter. He's a freak shooter. He's one of the best in the history of college basketball, and you really have to make him uncomfortable and play him tight and not give him any room, and we did a better job of that down the stretch today. Q. How happy were you with the pace of the game? You had a lot of opportunities in transition early in the shot clock, as well? JOHN GIANNINI: Yeah, that's a great question because we also tried to play slow at times. We don't have a ton of depth, and sometimes you don't want -- especially when you have a lead, you don't want the other team to make a big run on you, and that happens when you do play faster. I thought we used great judgment today. I thought we scored quick when it was there, and when it wasn't there, we were real patient, and that's what coaches start talking about in junior high, attack, and if you can get an easy one, take it; if not, let's be patient, and our guys executed that perfectly. Q. When you played Duquesne in late January, you guys finished that game, I think, with just 60 points, and as Jordan mentioned there, he said you guys ran out of gas. What do you think today offensively was kind of the difference for you guys? JOHN GIANNINI: Maybe just getting a little better and being more confident. Just, again, the whole NCAA Tournament -- or A-10 tournament reality. They didn't want to have their season end. We worked incredibly hard for the last couple years actually. This group has been with us for a while, and obviously we're very disappointed with our record. But we're not disappointed in our kids, and we didn't want to be disappointed with the end of the season. We've won, I think, four -- we're 4 and 3 of our last seven and we've played good teams, and these kids want to get better, and they got better today. And we played better than we did at Duquesne in every aspect of the game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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