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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2016Ed ConroyLouis DabneyOrlando, Florida Tulane - 65, UCF - 63 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from Coach and then take questions. ED CONROY: First of all, I would like to just credit UCF. I thought our guys played extremely hard the first half and caused a lot of turnovers and kind of had them out of sync a little bit. But they came charging out of the halftime and got that thing tied up and then the lead. I thought they played very well in the second half, but I was also extremely proud of our guys and just the resiliency they showed and the toughness. The team has been through a lot, faced a lot of challenges this year. But you can see watching that game today why I love coaching them so much. They're a together group and they play really hard. Have some deficiencies, but they keep on plugging along and I though they showed great resilience in the second half, really led by Dabney, as our senior leader, to get that thing back to where we could get the win today. Q. We talked in the conference call the other day you said that you felt like you faced two different versions of UCF when you played them during the regular season. What kind of version did you feel like you guys were going up against tonight? ED CONROY: I made this statement when we talked earlier in the week that I felt like we saw two different teams because the first time we played, Tacko wasn't nearly the factor he became later in the year. And I give their coaching staff and I give that young man a ton of credit. It's been fun to watch him develop. I watched every game on film, and it's fun to watch him develop. So I credit everybody in their program with that and mostly him. The second time we played them, I thought he just dominated and we had to make some adjustments. And I think you saw today we really tried to keep Ryan Smith, who I thought did a fabulous job of sacrificing himself for our team and only playing the minutes when Tacko was out there. And then the rest of our guys really understanding about how we can push it on the break and the tempo and what we needed to do as far as keeping a body on him all night. Because he's a factor, there's no question about it. Q. You guys went on that 8-0 run down the stretch, you were down, obviously then took the lead, forced Coach Jones to call the timeout. Did you see something different in that little sequences there or just a little bit extra defensive pressure? ED CONROY: I thought our defensive pressure in the first half was outstanding. For whatever reason, immediately in the second half I felt like we were just a half a step slow. Just not finishing possessions, missed some key rebounds that they scored on. And so really what we talked about in those couple timeouts, especially the one before we went on the run, was who was going to spark us defensively. Maybe get us a transition basket or two. Because I thought we were getting some-- the ball where we wanted it. We weren't making the right decisions and we missed some of those in close shots. But I thought as long as we kept defending, we would get some transitions sooner or later and get out there and run. And part of our whole game plan was we're going to be the faster team at the end of this game. We're going to keep shuttling guys in and out and try to keep the pressure on them and hopefully they would break toward the end. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Tonight it worked out. Q. Coming into this game, what was the belief factor for the players that you could come in today and upset UCF in Orlando? LOUIS DABNEY: First off, I give all the glory to God, but we give a lot of credit to those guys. That's a great team we just played against. Our whole mindset was to -- how we felt, we felt that we were the better team, and we just came up short the first two times we played these guys. We just felt like we were the better team and we should have won the first two. ED CONROY: I'll just add on that a little bit. We -- for whatever reason, we have won seven road games in the last two years and we haven't been as successful at home. And that's what we talked about when we took the floor when we heard their crowd. We said, hey, we're a road too many anyway, so let's go, let's have some fun with this. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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