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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2016Donnie JonesTacko FallAdonys HerniquezA.J. DavisOrlando, Florida Tulane - 65, UCF - 63 DONNIE JONES: Thank these seniors. Unfortunately this was their last game, just like to thank those guys and for the career they have had with us. It's always hard to have that last game, and Daiquan, and Staph and Shaheed, these guys have been first-class kids, and they're going to graduate this spring, as well from UCF, which I'm proud of. But I just want to thank those guys. Those guys have given a lot to our program and obviously these three guys to the right of me. These guys have played their heart out all year long. You're looking at two sophomores and a freshman that did a lot of great things for our program this year, and really built a great foundation for the future. So I'm really proud of these guys that are up here. Unfortunately, we got down the first half, didn't think we had a great start to the game, we were too hyped up probably. Playing in front of the home crowd, having a chance to go out here. I thought our guys were really just a little too hyped. Once we calmed down at halftime, I thought we come out did exactly what we needed to, got ourself back in the game, and put ourself in a situation down the stretch there. Obviously we got up five, but you got to finish the game. Give Tulane credit, they battled back and made the plays down the stretch and unfortunately we fell short. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Question is for A.J. With seconds left on the clock, I think you guys had a 30 and you threw -- inbounded the ball. Can you walk us through that last possession, what was your thinking on it. A.J. DAVIS: I knew we had another timeout. We set up a good play to run. I felt like he was open and we -- it was just a little miscommunication and the pass just didn't get to him. They played solid defense and probably a bad decision on my part. I probably could have went ahead and called the timeout, but I thought he had a good look at cutting. And Matt's a great shooter, so I thought he was going to one, two into it and knock down the shot. I believed he was going to make it. So, it's just one of those, you could have called the timeout, you could have played it. I just felt -- I thought he was open, and we just didn't communicate right on the play. But we had a good play drawn up and we just weren't able to execute it. Q. Is this kind of just an overall maybe, like, a microcosm of this season. Slow start, struggle offensively, turnovers, just not being able to get the finish there down the stretch? DONNIE JONES: Yeah, we had some moments that we did do that. But we had some games where we did start out well. Turnovers have hurt us a lot this year during the year. That has been a struggle for us, especially offensively. I thought we played well enough defensively to have a chance to win the game tonight. The defense actually kept us in the game, and especially when we were struggling when we turned it over. But we did get off to a slow start, but we did battle back tonight. Q. You talked about defense and this is for the players as well. You guys were out-rebounding them for most of the game. Does that add to the level of frustration in this loss knowing that you did out-rebound Tulane? DONNIE JONES: Yeah. Yes. I thought that actually we did out rebound them by 13 in the game. Obviously had our opportunities. A lot of the times they were self inflicted issues that we had on the offensive end. Especially in the first half. I think we had 13 turnovers at halftime. And I can't say -- a lot of those were unforced turnovers that we didn't get a shot up at all. But we rebounded well enough. It wasn't second shots that beat us. It was either a bad shot early on that or a shot that didn't go down. We had some looks, we just didn't make them early on. Q. As two of the main guys coming back for next year's team, what kind of -- what do you have to do to -- when you look back at the season, what do you have to do to build and move forward to next season and kind of make next season better? A.J. DAVIS: Just get better as basketball players. I think both of us know we have a lot of room to improve, and there's a lot of things we could do better on the floor. I think a lot of it for us was experience. Like we're young, we have pretty big roles as -- that's not an excuse by any means. But I think just the experience and growing, and just getting to know our team and having team chemistry over the summer and stuff like that is going to help us a lot. So just getting better going into next year, looking back on this year, seeing what we did wrong, and just trying to find where we can improve to help our team next year. Q. Adonys, A.J., I would like to hear from both of you, if you can, you guys were up by six with four minutes to go. You guys kind of started building a little bit of momentum. What can you learn from what happened following that lead? ADONYS HENRIQUEZ: I think that our shot selection the last four to five minutes, we just took some shots that we shouldn't have rushed or whatever. I'm just really proud of our team and really proud of these seniors for everything they gave to us. And next year we'll be back and we'll be a better team. A.J. DAVIS: Pretty much what he said. I think turnovers and bad shots kind of hurt us the whole game. We were just kind of just rushing a little bit. We just -- when we slow down and just play basketball we had some great looks. I was in a rush, I had five turnovers, so there was some passes I probably shouldn't have thrown or some plays I tried to make that I shouldn't have. But yeah, I agree with everything he said. I'm just proud of our team, I think we gave a great effort, I think we played with some heart. But we just didn't finish out the game. Q. Tacko, talk about your first season, how you think you progressed and what you think the future of the program is. And also for Coach Jones that same question. TACKO FALL: I think that I learned a lot during this season. Coming in, I only had three years of playing. And I think I came along pretty well. I got to thank my teammates also and the coaches for just staying on me all the time, everybody, starting from the seniors. You had Daiquan, you had Staphon, even the juniors, Justin, they were always in my ears, just telling me that I could always give more. So I think that I owe them a lot for that. And the coaches, Coach Jones, Coach Tillis, just staying in my ear also every day, staying in the gym with me. That helped me come along pretty well. DONNIE JONES: I think Tacko really grew, third year playing ball as he mentioned. The speed of the game was the biggest thing he needed to experience. The only way can you experience that is play. He had to see a lot of different things. The physicality, obviously, was new, like it is to most freshmen, but I really love the way that he really took coaching, the way he progressed, the way he trusted his teammates. I think that both of them had to learn to play with him, and he had to learn to play with them. And you started to see that emerge towards the end of the year. This spring, this summer will be huge for him in the fall as it will for these other two guys sitting right here and our team coming back. We'll bring back seven or -- of our top probably eight guys, and obviously we have B.J. Taylor sitting out who is a very important piece to our team next year, and then obviously we'll add four or five new players. So, I think that I'm excited about this group here and who we got. And although we fell a little short tonight, these guys, I know they care, they got a great love for each other, and I know the process of building this group here is going to be fun to continue to build. Q. How much frustration was there for you over the course of this season? There were a lot of things out of your control, injuries and some other things, and then you guys played well at times and then had some slipping. How much frustration overall? DONNIE JONES: Well it's easy to be -- I don't really get frustrated. Obviously you want guys to play well. Sometimes you get young guys, they have to experience it. And these guys got -- I let them play through a lot of stuff because I knew it was not necessarily about the now as much as it was the future. I think that sometimes when you have young guys, they haven't experienced it, there's usually inconsistency. And that's sometimes knowing how hard to play, how hard to compete, and sometimes being consistent. And we struggled as a group with that sometimes, because we probably asked more from our young guys than we did our older guys. So, with that, these guys did an amazing job with what we asked from them every day. Great attitude, obviously may not have showed up in the win column. But I know the competitors these guys are. They came here to build a program, change a process, and unfortunately, that's not going to happen in one night. That's going to take a little bit of time. But I love the pieces that we got here with this group. Q. Emotional -- that game was emotional towards the end of the game, ups and downs for your side. Did you ever notice maybe the team was getting too high or too low? There was sometimes where some players were maybe getting emotional there toward the end? DONNIE JONES: Yeah, of course. I think any time -- you got a game that's coming down close like this, there's going to be emotion. I don't know about too high or too low. You got to get stops. Tulane made some big shots there. I think we got up five or six and they hit two big threes there that were huge. But we still had opportunities to come down and score and we missed some shots and had some shots that were good look, just didn't go. And it comes down making plays in these kind of situations. And we'll fell short with that. But these kid battled, no one tucked their head at all. These kids have competed. And when you're not winning and getting the instant results, sometimes it's easy to tuck your head. But I have to say this group has never done that. They have been discouraged sometimes because they want to do well and they care. But this is a group that will continue to get better and you'll see a better team next year. Q. You talked about the turnovers being an issue in the game today. Do you attribute that to more of how Tulane was playing on defense or maybe some miscommunications on offense? DONNIE JONES: Yeah, well I don't know. I don't want to take away from Tulane. Obviously they're a good defensive team. We played them a couple times and obviously won two games against them coming in into here. So they didn't do anything different than what we expected. I think we sometimes were a little hyped up trying to do too much. Sometimes guys were just trying to make things happen. Not selfishly, but I think sometimes just by the speed of the game, they're trying to get our -- get something going for our team. Sometimes that becomes one mistake, two mistakes, and then it just got consistent with others. But regardless of all that, as I told our team at halftime, we were down eight and we didn't play as well as we could because we were too hyped up. Had 13 turnovers, we were still right there. We had shot 4-11 from the free throw lane in the first half, we missed seven free throws or it's a one point game. We came out in the second half, we made the adjustment. We shot 13 or 14 or 14 of 15 from the free-throw line, made some big plays to get ourself up, and we were right there to have a chance to win this game. Q. Question has to be asked. Did you feel like your job was on the line coming into tonight? There's been a lot of outside noise about the pressures of the season and the way the team performed the season, did you feel like that tonight? DONNIE JONES: I did not. I did not feel like that. There's always pressures, and in every job I think always there's pressures when anyone's coaching and -- but I didn't -- I never coach under pressure like that. I think it was about these guys tonight, it was about these seniors, it was about this team, and obviously having a chance to hopefully keep this thing rolling. We were so close to that tonight. Q. Stemming off her question, walking off the court, what was your reflection process, like taking this season in and kind of finally realizing what could potentially unfold with this group if this essentially was the last chance with these guys tonight? DONNIE JONES: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you always have emotions going off. I think more than anything for those three seniors as I was walking off I really wanted to carry on for them and the thought process always as coaches, we're looking ahead thinking once this is over, what do we got to do to get better. How do we put ourself in a situation to learn from this. Because we'll be here again next year and have a chance to do something about it. How are we going to grow this seem from this experience. So, that kind of was my reflection walking off the floor. Q. Reflecting on next year, is there any chance since the tournament is here, you guys are the hometown team, that you will have the guys come to the championship game just so that they can visualize that and possible see themselves being in that position come next year? DONNIE JONES: That's a good question. That's something that we may look at doing. Obviously I think there's always something to learn from that. To see that feeling and watch what it's about with other guys, so that's something that we may look at doing. But that's something we'll discuss. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. DONNIE JONES: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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