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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2016Mike LonerganYuta WatanabeTyler CavanaughBrooklyn, New York George Washington - 73, St. Louis - 65 MIKE LONERGAN: Well, very happy that we won the game, and kind of survived in advance. I thought we did a lot of good things, but give St. Louis credit. They shot the heck out of the ball last night and again today. Kept them in the game. Yuta got off to a great start which really helped us, and I thought Tyler did a great job on the glass in the second half. We're happy that we won and don't have much turnaround time now, and got a chance to play St. Joe's again, a very well-coached team and they're having a terrific season. Obviously it's a very important game for us. We're happy to be in this position to have a chance to play for another top-50 win. It would be our fourth, but we know we have to bring our A game tomorrow, especially at the defensive end, which we didn't do in our first match-up with St. Joe's. Q. Tyler, Joe had a season-high 10 assists today. How nice was that to see him dish the ball and how did that help you? TYLER CAVANAUGH: It's funny because in the interview after the game, he was like, Byron said he had assists. I was, like, whoa, I didn't even realize it. That`s big for us when our point guards push the pace and dish the ball, and we got guys knocking down shots. Yuta was 70 percent from the floor, Patco made two big threes, Matt Hart made a big one, and Kevin, too, so we've just got to keep doing that. Q. Tyler, after you took that 13-point lead, they started hitting a lot of threes and guys looked fairly well open. Were they doing anything special to get open or was the defense a little lax? TYLER CAVANAUGH: Probably defense a little lax. They do a good job of really spreading the floor, running the highball screen with four shooters and they knocked down shots to their credit. I helped too much on Reggie the one time and Yarbrough hit one in the corner, but we'll be better. Davidson torched us and we got better today, so we've just got to keep taking steps in the right direction. Q. Tyler, you guys went on that 10-0 run in the second half when they had been keeping it close. Was there anything in particular that you felt contributed to that, why you guys locked in in that particular moment? TYLER CAVANAUGH: We got some steals if I remember right. We got deflections and we were running. That's when we're at our best, getting Yuta and Patco out in transition, and Matt Hart came in and nailed a big three for us during that spurt. We just have to keep defending, and like Coach said St. Joe`s took our lunch money last time we played them, so we've got to carry that over to tomorrow. Q. Yuta, you started three for three and then you missed a couple and it seemed like early in the season that might have rattled you a little but you kind of stayed the course. Do you think your mental toughness shooting has gotten a little better? YUTA WATANABE: I think so, yeah. Even though the last two games I wasn't shooting well, people talked to me like keep shooting, don't worry about it, so I could have stayed confident. Today I hit like first three shots. I played like with that mentality. Q. Yuta, for a while this season it did seem like you were struggling with your shot, then found out ways to contribute getting to the rim more. But lately and today it does seem like you've found that stroke again. Would you say that that's true? Is that something that you feel like you're experiencing? YUTA WATANABE: Yeah, I was shooting like every night even though I wasn't shooting well. I knew this is going to happen. Yeah, I feel like my shooting is back finally. Q. Coach, obviously St. Joe's tomorrow, tough with DeAndre' Bembry and Isaiah Miles. What's your plan on stopping those two? MIKE LONERGAN: You know, Coach Turner has the scout. I'm not going to lie to you. He came in here and this was one game for me I really wanted to focus on. Well, George Mason I focused on a lot, too, and just want to get through this. I'm glad we played early. I get to watch some film, look at our last game, and I know we didn't play any defense, but it's to their credit, too. They've got a lot of scoring ability. We're going to try to change defenses, do some different things, and we're going to have to get something out of our bench because we got really tired there early tonight. It's not just Bembry and Miles, they've got a really good team. They`re hungry for a win. They`re playing for a lot, there's a lot of stake, so hopefully it's a great game. Q. You mentioned the chance for another top-50 win. You can take care of all of your business if you win this whole thing, but how hard is it for you or do you have any tendency to sort of look at the bigger picture and what it means if you don't win this whole weekend but if you get a couple more wins? MIKE LONERGAN: If we lose tomorrow, we're going to the NIT. I have no problem saying that and our goal will be to try to get to Madison Square Garden. If we win tomorrow I truly believe we`ll be in the NCAA Tournament. If you take the names on the top and off the list and do a blind taste test and look at the résumé, Seton Hall is a top-three Big East time last time I looked, ACC, Virginia might be number one. Penn State is not a bad team, they've beaten a couple nationally ranked teams, VCU at VCU, St. Joe`s here would give us top 50s. Even within our league, if you look at some of the teams everybody has locked in, they don't have -- some of them don't have four top-50 wins. I don't really listen to all that noise as Coach Schmidt would say, but I think if we win tomorrow we're in great position. Some of those other teams I see on the TV, they can't do anything else, they're done. I came from America East, but I'll tell you what, I'll put our wins against Monmouth's wins any day of the week. They're a big story, but I truly believe in the end if we do the right things here, whether we have to win one game or two, the people in that room that know basketball, it's not going to be about who has the best player in the country or who has the bench, all that stuff, it's going to be about the deserving teams. We played a tough schedule. Tennessee, we beat them in here, and they were pretty good. But then their best player, one of the best players in the SEC, is out for the year, so that didn't help things. We have not lost a game to a team from a 1 bid conference all year. We only lost two games in a row once the whole year. If we were in the Big East or ACC, everybody would be talking about we lost to Dayton. We were up six with five minutes lefts and Joe McDonald didn't even make the trip. But nobody knows that so we're still fighting for respect just like our league is, but I don't talk to the team about that. I just say, hey, we do the right things and win. But I laugh when people say we have to win the whole thing here to go to the NCAA. It's definitely not true. I don't study it, but I think we're in a great position, but none of that matters tomorrow if St. Joe's beats us. Q. What did you see as the difference today versus your regular season loss to St. Louis? MIKE LONERGAN: Well, St. Louis is kind of similar, we were up 13 I think with 10 minutes left at St. Louis on the road. We missed a lot of free throws there. I don't remember what it was. In the second half it was 6 for 13, and we took some bad shots, let them get back into it, but we had the ball. We had a really good player at the line, too, and we missed two free throws in a row. And then I guess we were thinking about that and we gave up a wide open three to Crawford. Give them credit, they`re very well coached, but that`s a game I felt we kind of gave away on the road. If losing to St. Louis, the lead game, and losing to DePaul are our two worst losses, I don't think that's that bad. I've seen a lot of teams with some bad losses out there that people have locked in the tournament. We'll see. Like I said, I want to make the NCAA so bad, but we don't talk about it with our team because they know what's at stake, but we've got to take care of business tomorrow, and that's all we're really worried about. Q. You talked about guys being tired and conditioning may have been an issue in the past A-10 tournaments. Is that an issue this time? MIKE LONERGAN: I don't know because we haven't played defense like we normally do this year. So I think we were getting after it early in the game. Yuta was hitting shots and we got really tired early, and we had some time off here to prepare. So that surprised me a little bit. But we don't have a deep bench. Even at the end of the game I was trying to get our starters out of there, and the game wasn't really over yet. They've got to get some rest, maybe we`ll play a little more zone and do some different things so we don`t use as much energy. But we had to use a lot of energy because we were hedging out on ball screens because St. Louis has gone the last half of the year to a four-guard lineup and that's difficult for us to have our bigs chase those guys around. You know, hopefully we're rested and we've got enough energy tomorrow to really give St. Joe's a game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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