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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 8, 2017Jamel ArtisKevin StallingsNew York, New York Virginia - 73, Pittsburgh - 65 THE MODERATOR: Coach, just a brief opening statement, and we'll go to questions. COACH STALLINGS: We're very disappointed. Congratulations to Virginia. They just played better than we did. Our inability to keep them away from effective three-point shooting, I thought, really cost us for the whole game really and ended up being the difference. We just didn't guard them as well as they guarded us, and as a result, we weren't able to win. Q. 44-43 game after the Jeter dunk with 13:05 left. Did you feel like you had the momentum up at one point, or was it one of those things that was just fleeting? COACH STALLINGS: We certainly had the momentum at that point. Jamel and I were just talking about that coming into the press room. I don't remember the exact series of events, but I remember we missed a front end of a bonus in that stretch they scored on. It felt like it was one, and then it seemed like it was seven or eight real quickly there. I haven't seen the time sheet or anything and would have to go back and see the film to see exactly what happened. They kind of started -- I thought they started taking the ball to the basket on us a little bit more on that stretch. Perrantes got to the goal and got to the foul line, I do remember that. They drove us and got fouled a few times and converted their free throws, and I do remember we missed a front end of a bonus and missed a couple of good shots, and then all of a sudden, they had some separation again. That was our best stretch in the game was those first seven or eight minutes of the second half, and I thought that we were getting ready to have an opportunity to get back on top of the game, but unfortunately, it didn't unfold that way. Q. Jamel, yesterday you shot 3 of 12. It was a tough day for you from the field. Today you ended up 6 of 9, including 4 of 6 from three. What was the difference today in terms of your feel for the game? JAMEL ARTIS: The coaches try to tell me everything I do on my shot. So I just try to listen every time I shoot the basketball, leave my follow-through up, bend my knees more with my shot. So I tried to do that more today, and as a result, it was falling. Q. Perrantes getting in that stretch that you mentioned had 10 of their 15 points. Just talk about what a clutch guy he is and how hard he is to defend in big moments. COACH STALLINGS: Yeah, he's a good player, and I thought we had him under wraps for most of the game. He did hurt us. Like I said, he got to the goal and got to the foul line. But he's just a good player, and he's a winning player. He's just a winning player. He does what's needed to win games. Those guys do a great job of buying in to what Tony's selling and how they have to play at Virginia to be successful. It starts with Perrantes. He's the senior. He's the leader. He's the guy that sort of stirs the drink for them. So he was effective when he needed to be, and that's the sign of a good player. He was good when the game got close, and unfortunately, we didn't do quite a good enough job against him. Q. Kevin, I guess, how nice is it to see this group kind of come together tonight and really fight against an opponent that was kind of playing at their best for large stretches of the game? COACH STALLINGS: Well, I thought that -- I do think that we tried to utilize this week to come together and to play, think, be a team, and I thought that was reflected in our play. I thought it was reflected in our win last night. I thought it was reflected in our ability to go from wherever the game was at halftime to get it back to where we were really back in the mix and in that game. Our guys fought hard. We didn't play great tonight, certainly, but you don't play great against Virginia very often. They grind the game down. They play great defense. But I thought our guys fought really, really hard, and I was very proud of that. So our guys, especially our seniors, were thrust into a tough situation. They had played one way for one person for three years, and I came in and asked them to do some different things, and we were positionally absent of some things. I had to ask this guy to play out of position all season long. I thought he did a terrific job. I thought he was great tonight. But it's been a challenging year for all of us, and I was proud of these guys for really fighting it to the end and doing the best they could. Q. Kevin, what do you feel like your first season here, what are you going to take away from the most this year? COACH STALLINGS: I really enjoyed these seniors, and I don't think that there's any question that it's been somewhat dysfunctional at times, but I've enjoyed them individually. I've enjoyed them collectively. I laugh when I hear things. I don't read too much, but I laugh when I hear things. You know, I benched him to start the game last weekend, and I get on my text messages, and on January the 28th, he sent me a text one night and said, I love you, Coach. You know, we've worked hard, all of us have worked hard to sort of acquiesce to the other and accommodate the other and know that we're all in a situation that maybe we didn't all choose exactly the way it unfolded. I thought Jamel and Mike and Chris and Sheldon, I thought those guys received me well, tried hard for me, and, again, under the circumstances did the best they could. Q. Kevin, how do you go about this off-season losing four seniors, and what kind of challenge is it going to be to replace, I think, over 70 percent of your scoring? COACH STALLINGS: Well, I think that it will be very difficult because we're replacing some very good players and some guys that are very experienced and played a lot of basketball at Pitt. We're going to have to turn the page, and Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther are going to have to step up into prominent positions in the program in terms of leadership and productivity and things like that. There are a myriad of things that we will do in an attempt to sort of shift the culture into what we think it needs to be. I tried real hard this season not to -- I didn't want to come in here and blow up everything these guys knew. You know, you're going to do it this way, and I don't care what you've learned. I tried to really accommodate who they were, what they had known, and other ways, and how they've had success. Going forward, we'll turn it over. We'll turn it over. It will -- we'll have a lot of new faces. We've already got six or seven guys in the fold and still looking for more. So it will have a facelift over the next year or two, a pretty thorough one. But, again, I would say, to begin with, we would start with Cam and Ryan and our expectations that they could step forward and be leaders and guys of prominence in this program going forward. Q. Coach, I was hoping you could tell me about one of Virginia's players, Kyle Guy. Kind of what do you see in his game? COACH STALLINGS: He's got a terrific ability to make baskets, and he's got great legs on his shot. He's a terrific shooter. Even though he's not real big, he's got great legs and lift on his shot. So he elevates, and he can shoot with his body not all the way turned and not all the way squared up and still shoot very accurately. He was very effective tonight. We did a pretty good job on him, I thought, in the first two games. Tonight he really hurt us. Q. Kevin, you just now talked about kind of transforming the culture. What does the culture have to be for this program to be successful? COACH STALLINGS: I think that, first of all, it's got to be something that I'm comfortable with because, as the person that's in charge of it, it needs to reflect the things that I believe in, the things that our program will now stand for because I'm in charge of it and that kind of thing. But it's going to be a culture of accountability, a culture of unselfishness, of trying to do the right thing on and off the floor. I'm not saying that these are shifts in what the culture has been in the past. I don't know what the culture was before I got here. I'm just saying what it needs to be going forward. There are lots of other things, but we'll just try to get guys in here that are ACC level players that will do things both on the court and off the way we expect them to be done and try to be as competitive as we can be. Q. Obviously, not the way you wanted the season to end or the tournament to end, but what can you say about the team, the fight they showed, down by 11 at halftime, fell behind even more in the second half, I believe, to cut it to one and really never give up when it seemed like the game could have been over? COACH STALLINGS: We talked about that a little before you got here. I was really proud of how our guys fought and kind of came together this week. Kind of the character they showed to stay together given a tough circumstance and a tough season, and to come out and to perform the way they did last night and have to grind out that win against Georgia Tech and then come back tonight and really fight to the very, very end. There was no back up, no give up, no give in. I was proud of them for that. We didn't play great, but a lot of that had to do with Virginia. But I'm proud of these guys. I'm proud of these seniors. I hope they feel like they can walk out of here holding their head high. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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