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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2017Maurice JosephPatrick SteevesTyler CavanaughPittsburgh, Pennsylvania RICHMOND 70, George Washington 67 MAURICE JOSEPH: I want to give credit to Richmond. That's a talented team, some really good players. I think Shawndre' Jones and T.J. Cline are one of the most potent duos in this league. They are really tough to prepare for; they are really tough to guard. I think our guys did a really good job of that for vast majority of that game. T.J. Cline only got nine shots, eight points. Obviously he does what he does; he got his eight assists and five rebounds, so he kind of filled the stat sheet there. But we thought we did a really good job on him. Yuta did a tremendous job. So that's a talented team. It's a talented team, and I thought we competed, I thought we battled for 40 minutes. I thought the game came down to a couple plays here and there that the ball didn't bounce our way or they hit some big time shots. But there's a reason that they finished third in this league. This is a very talented league and that's a very talented team. So proud of our guys the way we battled and proud of our guys the way we finished the season. My hope is that we have more basketball to play. I think we deserve it. I think that coming into this game with a 94 RPI, winning six in a row and beating teams like Daytons and Bonnies, and I think we got some pretty good wins under our belt. I think we deserve to have our season prolonged, but again, obviously that's not my decision. But I just hope for these guys that we have an opportunity to continue to compete and continue to grow as a unit. Q. On the last play, what was your mind-set? You guys had battled and battled and battled the last few minutes. Did you feel good about that last possession off the time-out? TYLER CAVANAUGH: I wanted the ball but they put two on me. I should have popped out to the wing and got it, but I don't know. They made a good defensive play. Q. You had three blocks tonight, and you guys as a team held the Player of the Year to eight points. How did you think you guys did defensively? PATRICK STEEVES: I think we did really well defensively holding them below 45 percent, really focusing on T.J. Cline and trying to limit his touches and get the ball out of his hands. Yeah, I mean, we can't really ask to be in a better position against this team than down one with the ball out-of-bounds and seven seconds left and two time-outs. Just didn't fall our way, I guess. Q. Could you kind of describe this journey at the end of the season where you've gone through six games, all wins, beating Dayton, winning this first A-10 game but then losing this in kind of heartbreaking fashion? TYLER CAVANAUGH: Yeah, we really found our stride late in the season. Made good plays. We beat good teams. I mean, six in a row, that's big for us. We battled last night. We were resilient against a good Saint Louis team. Thought we had this one tonight. So it's tough. Q. What did you draw up at the end on the last play? Was it geared towards Tyler or were there other options? MAURICE JOSEPH: Yeah, it was geared towards Tyler. We run a play where we kind of leg whip them and roll the ball in, and just let him wheel and deal close to the basket. We knew he would have a guard on him because T.J. Cline was guarding him at the time. So Buckingham, who is a pretty tough kid, 6-4, 6-5, whatever he is; we knew we would have size advantage, so we would leg whip him, because it's a play we have. But they did a good job. I think they brought a second guy to him, so Tyler couldn't get the rock. But the second option is to throw the ball over the top to Yuta who was being guarded by Joe Kirby, who we knew was 6-1 or whatever it is, or the plan was, can't get him to Tyler, just go right over the top to Yuta; and he just had the ball on his right side to kind of drive to the middle with his left hand which is his strength. And only down one, we want to either try to get to the basket, get fouled; we didn't want to shoot a jumpshot. We wanted it to be a bump-and-grind type of play. I think the pass was kind of further out than Yuta expected for some reason. Usually when we run it, we want to get it tight and be able to turn the corner, but he was all the way outside the three-point line, and when he drove it, he did a good job of digging off the opposite wing. They got a hand on the ball. Didn't really see the play. O haven't seen it on a replay or anything like that but I think they got a hand on the ball and Yuta was unable to get to the rim. And then we were trying to have another guy space out as a last option for a jumpshot, and they made a good defensive play, taking away our first option. And when we got the ball to our second option, they made the good defensive play at the end. Q. Defensively for them, what changed, maybe in those last seven or eight minutes? Tyler was held without a shot for the last 7:34. MAURICE JOSEPH: Well, they went to their zone, and they did a good job of just kind of staying on top of them, and you know, we had some pretty stagnant possessions there where we took some last-second shots. And they did a good job of switching, especially defenses, and the way they play, you never know if they are in a matchup zone where we could screen them or within our traditional zone. So they did a good job of masking what they wanted to do, and that made us stagnant a little bit. We got a couple good looks. We ran a play for Jordan, he knocked it down and we ran another play late and we scored on it. So we found our stride in it, so we did a better job late. But there was a couple possessions there that they did a good job of staying topside on Tyler, avoiding us. You can't just sit there and kind of just look for him and look for him, just wasting time, seconds off the clock. Credit to them; they did a great job of taking away our best player. I think we did the same to them on the other end. So kind of like a chess match and they won the final -- they had a good final move there. T.J. Cline, eight points, three-for-nine shooting. That's a really good team. I thought our guys did a pretty good job overall. Q. Whether or not there's more basketball to play, how do you feel the team has progressed since you got the interim tag since Game 1? MAURICE JOSEPH: Leaps and bounds, exponentially. Look at guys like J.B. who has turned himself into a pretty good Atlantic 10 guard. He couldn't remember two plays in a row when he first got here, you know what I mean, so he's improved classically. Pat Steeves found his stride. He got healthy. He went through, suffered and injury and came back stronger than ever; had monster games. Jordan Roland took a major jump this year in production and confidence. I'm looking for him to become a really good player in this league. I think he has a great off-season of work ahead of him. I think he could be really, really good in this league. You look at down the line, we have really talented freshmen: Smith, Toro, Marfo, are all going to get better in the off-season. They are a really good team. Watanabe and Jaren Sina are going to be some really experienced players. Jaren is going to be a fifth-year guy. So we've improved. We finished the season on a six-game winning streak. Assists, our offense, everything was clicking. We just grew gradually throughout the course of the year and it shows in our stats and we improved defensively from being one of the bottom teams defensively in the league to being top five or top six or whatever it was in terms of field goal defense and points allowed. We finished the leading league play as the best three-point shooting team. I remember we aren't there earlier in the year. We weren't shooting the ball as well. So we improved. We improved. Our guys came to work every day. They trusted the process. They stayed the course and we just kind of chopped wood. We just kept chopping wood. We just kept getting and better. Win or lose, our plan was to keep getting better and better and we did that all year I thought. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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