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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: ORLANDOMarch 16, 2017Mark TurgeonMelo TrimbleDamonte DoddOrlando, Florida Xavier - 76, Maryland - 65 THE MODERATOR: We'll get started right away. We'll have Coach Turgeon with an opening comment. Then please raise your hand with questions. MARK TURGEON: I thought the better team won tonight, the team that played better. Xavier was tremendous the second half, Bluiett, got going. I think they missed one shot in the second half, and we didn't rebound well in the second half. We were up 46-40, and we just kind of went in a drought, and they got hot. Give them credit. Then we got sped up a little bit towards the end. They played better. They deserved to win. Got a nice team. THE MODERATOR: Can we get questions for the players. Q. For Melo, you saw a similar situation last week against Northwestern second half with the drought. What happened tonight? Was it their defense? Was it, again, their defense sort of -- your offense leading to defensive mistakes? MELO TRIMBLE: We just didn't make any shots. I felt like we went up six, we got to relax and they started hitting shots and running our offense really well. We just couldn't capitalize and didn't defensive rebound very well and wasn't executing on the offensive end. Q. I wonder if both players could address the development of the program over the last three years, how far you think you've come from the time you got on campus and where you think the future is headed. DAMONTE DODD: We really worked really hard, and as you can see, we made it to the Tournament three straight years in a row. So the future is very bright for the team, and like Coach just told us in the locker room, we've just got to dedicate ourselves, and the guys that's coming back, they have to continue to work hard and get stronger and just continue to get better. But the future is really bright. MELO TRIMBLE: Just like Damonte said, made the Tournament three straight years in a row. We had a really good year this year with three freshmen that really carried the load. Next year the future is bright, like Damonte said. The guys that's coming back just got to keep working, and the guys that's coming also got to keep working. Since I've gotten here, we've just been winning, and I think that's a positive note. I think the future, like I said, is bright. Q. Melo, how much was it their zone in terms of impacting the offense, or how much of it was you guys, as you said before, settling for shots, settling for jumpers? MELO TRIMBLE: Like I said, we didn't execute the way we did in the first half. We got great open looks, just couldn't knock them down. Unfortunately, that's been how it is all season. Like I said, we had great looks. Like I said, we couldn't make any shots, and they were able to score on the other end. THE MODERATOR: Melo and Damonte, if you want to go back to the locker room, that's fine. We'll take questions for Coach Turgeon. Q. In terms of the drought tonight, second half, it seemed like this was a trend for much of the past 11 games. Is this something just you can explain, or is tonight an outlier in any way? I guess what happened, I guess, offensively? Was it part of a bigger thing that you saw down the stretch? MARK TURGEON: If I had the answer, I would have fixed it. I think they got hot, and we kind of got rushed a little bit. I think tonight at times we struggled with the change of defense. Not necessarily the defense that they were in, and recognizing it. So they were playing three different defenses, and everybody's got to recognize it on the floor. That really hurt us more than anything because we had some bad possessions because guys weren't in the right position with that. But I thought we had plenty of good looks at times, and we had some really good possessions, too. I think it was more the changing of defense tonight that gave us more problems than anything. Q. Coach, certainly Justin Jackson was on his game tonight versus the past few games. Was that an emphasis in practice to get him to shoot? It did land tonight. MARK TURGEON: I mean, he's a good player. He had a tremendous year. What a year that kid had. We worked hard, guys. I know it doesn't show on the scoreboard, but the thing I was proud about this team is we just kept fighting. It hadn't gone our way for about a month, really since Ceko went down, we haven't been the same team. We kept battling. But Justin was aggressive and got the dunk early. I think that kind of got him going. He made some jump shots, and they went zone. We found rhythm against the zone in the first half because they played one defense most of the time, and we found some rhythm against it, and he made some big threes. Second half, we just didn't have as much rhythm. Q. Mark, Cowan was on the bench quite a bit tonight. What did you see in his game tonight? And secondly, the experience those three freshmen got over the course of the whole season, what's that going to mean going forward? MARK TURGEON: Anthony, what a great year he had, and he still played 25 minutes. When they went the 1-3-1, he kind of got swallowed up a bit. I was trying to play big guards, but I didn't have a lot of depth tonight. He just got swallowed up. It was hard for him to make plays. So that's why he was out. But when he was in, I thought he really played well. He had the big steal in the second half and did a lot of good things for us. The experience that our freshmen had this year is amazing. What they were able to do, I mean, really, I say it was Melo's team because it was, but these cats, these three guys, I mean, what they had on their plate -- and we're going to step back in about a week and be like, wow, that was incredible what these guys just did. Right now it's hard because we didn't finish the season the way we wanted to do, but we just didn't have it in us anymore. Maybe it was just they had to play so many minutes and they didn't have the experience around them to help them. But those guys were terrific. Really proud of them. They had great years. 24 wins and playing the minutes they played was pretty special. Q. Mark, you spoke about Ceko's injury and the lack of depth, both seemed to impact you the last month. How tough is it when you make those changes and put them in hoping they're going to do something and they don't? Maybe they gave you a little bit, but how hard is it to keep any kind of momentum going when you go from Melo and Kevin to the guys coming off the bench? MARK TURGEON: To get to where we were, our bench was terrific this year. They helped us tonight. Even really helped us tonight. Jared had good minutes in the first half. I thought Jaylen hit a big three in the first half. There was a lot of things they helped us with. We just weren't the same team down the stretch. It wasn't for lack of effort. We tried. We practiced hard every day. This team was committed. Loved being around this team. Just couldn't get it done late. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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