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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 11, 2016Mark SchmidtMarcus PosleyDion WrightBrooklyn, New York Davidson - 90, St. Bonaventure - 86 MARK SCHMIDT: You know, great game. Give Davidson credit. They made the plays at the end, big shots, stuff that I thought we did a decent job of guarding, but they made the plays, and we've been making those plays throughout the year. But give them credit. They made the plays at the end when they needed to. Solomon hit that big three from 30 feet. Give our guys credit. We fought. We were up twice, double digits, but we knew Davidson wasn't going to quit. They fought back. It was a great college game. We had our chances, but we just came up short. But give all the credit to Davidson. I thought they played really well. Q. Was it just a battle of fouls that kind of caught up to you late where they were able to take advantage late in the second half and overtime? MARK SCHMIDT: I don't know. I just thought both teams were playing hard. Like I said, they made more plays than we did. I thought it was a great environment. It was a great college game, overtime. We just didn't make the plays and they did, and that's what it came down to. MARCUS POSLEY: Yeah, we didn't execute down the stretch like we were supposed to. For the past 10 games we were executing on both ends of the floor and we didn't execute like we were supposed to and we gave them chances and they took advantage of them. Q. Despite the outcome of the game, how proud are you of the fan support that you all had? It seemed like it was a home game. MARCUS POSLEY: Very proud. They've been consistent all year for us. Like I said last time, we do this for them, so we're very proud of them, and we thank them from the bottom of our heart for coming out and supporting us the way that they did. Unfortunately we couldn't get the win for them, but we definitely love them. Q. Marcus, these are games that really for over the last six, seven weeks you guys have pulled out. Obviously that doesn't happen at the end of this one. How tough is it being on that side after winning so many the way you did like this, and what are your guys' thoughts over the next 48 hours as you wait to see what happens? MARCUS POSLEY: It was tough. We've been in those situations before, so most of the time we pull them out, but they're a great team. If you give them too many opportunities they'll take advantage of it. We were a little banged up down the stretch, and it took a toll on us. A couple guys got fouls. We fouled out a couple guys, and kind of hurt us a little bit. But we stayed with it, we fought, so I'm proud of the guys, but these next 48 hours, just kind of go back, practice, work on our game. Hopefully see what happens for postseason play. Q. Dion, how difficult is this to deal with? You had a career night tonight. It was the best game I've seen you play, probably the best game of your career. To not be able to enjoy it because of the result? DION WRIGHT: I mean, it does hurt, but I played hard. My teammates fought hard, and we came up short. They made the plays down the end, toward the end of the game, and we didn't. Q. Marcus, you leave the game twice hobbling. Is that a knee injury, hamstring? How are you feeling? MARCUS POSLEY: No, I just hurt my ankle and took a bad fall towards the end. Just goes along with the game. Q. Marcus, how much do you feel like that maybe affected what you were able to do at the end of the game, especially in overtime, being sort of banged up the way you were? Did that affect you? MARCUS POSLEY: Just a little bit, not too much. I just felt like we were still in a position to win the game, and I just didn't execute the plays as a team. Even when the guys got me open, I just didn't hit the shots. I mean, I take blame for it, but at the end of the day, I'm still proud of everybody for it. Q. Marcus, did you get a sense early in the game when this guy got off to such a great start that he was out there possessed with something to prove? MARCUS POSLEY: Yeah, that's why we kept going to him. Dion had the hot hand, so every time we got in a two-man game we would look for the throw back, because they were protecting drives a lot, so the throw backs were open the whole night and Dion took advantage of it, so that's why we kept going to him early. It was the more they sagged off to help Dion on the throw back then we started attacking the basket. It worked out for us for the most part, but just execution on defense, we didn't execute like we were supposed to towards the end of the game. Q. Coach, the play at the end of regulation, Marcus made that drive and -- MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah. Q. Was that what you drew up? MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, we put Dion and Marcus in a two-man game, and then Marcus was going to make a play. If he wasn't open he was going to kick it to Dion, stuff that we were doing the whole game that was effective. I thought it was a good shot. It just didn't go in. Q. Can you talk a little bit about Dion? He was -- MARK SCHMIDT: He was tremendous. Both him and Marcus were tremendous. Got off to a good start. We knew the ball screen stuff was going to be effective, but I thought Dion played terrific offensively. He's really hard to guard, and we said from day one he's unorthodox, but he puts the ball in the basket. We got off to a good start because of him. Both of those guys who were sitting up here, both our seniors, they helped us get to this point and they've had great careers, great years, but both of them played extremely well tonight. Q. You guys had pretty good control of the boards early, but it seemed to fuel their comeback when they started getting a lot of offensive boards. Did you kind of feel like the game was slipping then? MARK SCHMIDT: No, long shots create long rebounds, tight rims, and they got a lot of long rebounds. There was a couple times where they had two or three shots at it. I don't know, I didn't see the stats, so I don't know what the rebounding situation was. Like I said, we don't have anything to be ashamed about. I thought we gave great effort. It was a good college basketball game. Like I said, they made some really good plays at the end to win it. Q. You guys are still up 7-8 with six, seven minutes to play, and then the officiating seemed to play a role. Do you think that affected the way you guys played in the last six minutes? MARK SCHMIDT: No. No. Q. 64 from the two gentlemen that were up here with you. Can you talk about just not getting that third guy going, whether it's Jay or -- MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, we shot -- yeah, you're right. Jay struggled today. His back has been bothering him a little bit, so he struggled. We didn't have that third and fourth guy like we usually do, and so the load went really on Dion and Marcus. If we could have got a third or fourth guy, that would have helped. But again, we were right there. We had the shot to win the game. You can say all you want to say, but we were right there. It was just -- we just didn't make the play when we needed to and they did. Q. What's going through your head in terms of the tournament? Is anything at all? MARK SCHMIDT: Nothing really goes through my head. (Laughter). No, we're disappointed, and like I said, our goal was to come here to try to win the Atlantic 10 Tournament. That was our goal. And it's disappointing that we lost. Proud of our guys' effort, but really haven't thought about anything besides what to tell the team after the game to make sure they understood how proud we were. Q. But after all you've accomplished this year, even with a loss tonight, you guys have to feel like you're pretty deserving to hear your name called on Sunday? MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, we hope. As I said, we said that we were going to -- at the end of the year we were going to throw our résumé on the table and hopefully it was good enough. I think being co-champion of the Atlantic 10 speaks volumes. We're one of the top seven conferences in the country. We've had some really good wins against some top-50 teams. I think we're deserving, but I'm just the coach at Bonaventure. I'm not in that room, but hopefully I think we're deserving. But we'll see on Sunday. Q. You made mention you want to come here and win the conference tournament, but obviously there's other stuff going on with the tournament. Did you feel like your kids may have gotten a little tight? There seems to be a lot more on the line for them than Davidson in that situation. MARK SCHMIDT: I don't know. I think we were 4-3 at one point in the conference season, and we knew if we were going to get anywhere in the conference, and our goal at the very beginning was to win the conference, we knew we needed to start winning, and we needed to win quickly. We won 10 of the last 11 games, and every one of those was a pressure game. Our kids knew that we needed to win. So I don't think we got caught up in the moment. The one good thing, and maybe it's a bad thing sometimes, our guys are really loose. The big moment, they don't freeze up. So that's a good thing at times. It's a bad thing at times, too. But I don't think that was the reason why. I just thought Davidson made some big shots, and that was the difference. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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