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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2017Chris HoltmannAndrew ChrabasczKethan SavageNew York, New York Xavier - 62, Butler - 57 COACH HOLTMANN: Give Xavier credit. They made plays and the free throws down the stretch that we just weren't quite able to make. So I thought we had some guys really play to win today and that was good to see. I thought our togetherness was really good, but you're going to struggle when you turn it over late and teams shoot 60 percent in the second half. So that was disappointing. But I thought there were some good things to take from this and we'll learn and move on. Q. Any common thread between losing the lead late in the Seton Hall game and also in this one or they just two different scenarios? COACH HOLTMANN: No, completely different in my mind, other than we fouled a little too much here. But completely different in terms of our offense. I thought we got what we wanted in the last five minutes. And I'll take the shot Kamar had there late, a clean 3. That was a great look for us. And I thought Kethan did a good job attacking the rim there. So I felt much better about how we managed. We just fouled too much and we didn't really -- I thought Drew worked his fanny off. We probably needed to give him some more support against Bluiett. Put him on the line too much. Q. Do you start to feel a little bit jinxed here, 0-for-4? COACH HOLTMANN: No, we played pretty much a good team every year. We're not ignoring the fact that we're 0-for-4. We want to win. Our guys want to win. We're disappointed. We're disappointed for our fans. We would have loved for our fans, everyone who came, to stay here a little longer. But you've gotta do it. You've gotta go win. Q. Coach, speaking of adjustments you want to make, what are some things that you're going to take with you going into the tournament? COACH HOLTMANN: You know, we'll kind of leave that between us. I think there's some things we've got to improve on. Fouling has been a little bit of an issue for us. That's one thing. We've gotta do a better job of that. And, again, we can't turn the ball over in certain situations. I think that was critical for us, that we've gotta do a better job of that. But we'll look at it. Again, I think I was really pleased with a couple of guys today in their play and we had a good way about us. We just didn't get it done. Q. Were Avery Woodson and Kethan Savage both dealing with some kind of nagging injuries? COACH HOLTMANN: Yes. Yeah, so it was -- they both got injured this week in practice. But we didn't -- we weren't necessarily sure that they would impact, they were cleared and ready to go but it might have affected Avery more than I even anticipated. And Kethan is dealing with -- a little bit banged up, but he performed well. But those guys did have some time off this week trying to recover from getting banged up in practice. Q. Can you say what the injuries were? COACH HOLTMANN: I think Kethan's just had a little bit of an Achilles strain and Avery just had a foot sprain. Q. Curious from an encore perspective and also from a coaching perspective, what you guys saw that they were doing defensively, because I'm looking at the second half, 3-pointers, 1-for-8, overall game 21 percent. At one point you were shooting, Butler was shooting 90 percent. And when Tyler missed two free throws, it went down to about 79 but finished the game at 68.8 percent from the line. So 3-pointers 21 percent for a team that can shoot. What did they do defensively? ANDREW CHRABASCZ: At the same time I think we missed some shots that we normally make. They ran us off the line. They're a physical team. And they were able to play physically tonight. Obviously late in the season it's going to be that type of game. Like I said, we made a lot of shots we missed today. We give them a lot of credit. They played really especially in the second half. I have the utmost confidence in our players. Going down the stretch at the free throw line, that's very uncharacteristic of us to miss free throws like that. So, yeah, we'll be fine from that. Q. I know it was a tough loss, but could you tell me what did you learn about the integrity and character of your team tonight? COACH HOLTMANN: I think what we've known all year that we've got a pretty resilient group. We knew we were going to play a really hungry Xavier team. And we were hungry ourselves. Our guys wanted to play well and wanted to win. I don't think we played poorly. I think we need to play better. But I don't think we played poorly, but we do need to play better. And hopefully we can learn some things and move forward. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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