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PAC-12 MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 8, 2018Wayne TinkleTres TinkleStephen Thompson Jr.Las Vegas, Nevada USC - 61, Oregon State - 48 WAYNE TINKLE: Yeah, tough one for us, obviously. It's never fun when you lose that last game. It was a tough first half, 19 points. Dug ourselves a hole. And I think all that we've been through, as hard as we've fought the last few weeks, it all kind of caught up to us. I was proud of the guys for continuing to fight defensively, but obviously the wrong time of the year to have our poorest offensive output. Q. For the players, how much at all do you feel like you guys ran out of gas tonight after a game last night? STEPHEN THOMPSON JR.: I don't really think it was about running out of gas or anything like that. I think we played hard and we played well defensively. We just had, like Coach said, the wrong time to have one of our worst offensive games of the year. But I think our defense was pretty good, so that really proves that I don't think fatigue was a big deal. THE MODERATOR: Anything to add to that? TRES TINKLE: No, Stevie hit it spot on. I don't think we ran out of anything. But you can't win any games if you only score 19 points in the half. Shots weren't falling. We held to a decent amount of points. So if we hit shots like we normally do, it's a completely different game. Q. Also for both the players, the emotions were obviously high last night and different kind of emotion today. You're two of the big three of this group. What are the emotions now? TRES TINKLE: This is tough. Obviously as athletes and competitors, we don't like losing. Our whole goal is to extend the season as long as you can, and coming up short, it's frustrating. But just got to use it for motivation. STEPHEN THOMPSON JR.: Yeah, like Tres said, I think there's a lot of points throughout the season that we can look back on now and take those as learning points as we move forward to the next year with the guys that are coming back. For our seniors, we just thank them for everything they've done for us. Q. Wayne, Chimezie was doing sort of whatever he wanted to down low. How difficult of a match-up was he for you guys? WAYNE TINKLE: Yeah, it was tough, obviously. To have 22 points, that was his biggest output against us. We tried smaller guys to keep it out of his hands. We tried bigger guys, and he made some tough shots. So obviously he stepped up. He's a tough, tough player, and he made some big buckets for him. I thought we did a really good job on their perimeter guys by and large. We were right there. Even though we only scored 19 in the first half, we kept telling our guys to dig in. We cut it to eight a few times. But they did a nice job defensively of frustrating us. We didn't finish in and around the basket or hit some open shots. We just knew that burst was going to come that might create some doubt. Then they got out in transition. They had zero transition points in the first half. They got all eight of their transition baskets in the second half. So we were right there. We're battling. We're going to watch the film, and it's going to be tough. The message in the locker room was all that we've been through, we said, look where we were a year ago, and look how far we've come. We're proud of the effort and the leadership. But we talked about this is something that they can take as a life lesson. I said, guys, just imagine if we would have given one more inch every day from the start of the season until now. Just one inch. Whether it's one extra rep when we're lifting weights, one extra sprint. We've got guys that work hard, don't get me wrong. But that's what life's all about. Just giving a little more. Little more buy-in maybe. We've done some really, really good things, and we challenge these guys that are going to be coming back. This is our first class, the 2015 class. Keep this thing together, keep building where we'll be another year from now. So that's what we've got to focus on and continue to stay hungry and keep grinding. Q. Tres, how's your foot, ankle feel tonight? Is it bothering you? TRES TINKLE: It's all right. It's fine. Q. Did you feel, Stephen, like the shots you were getting -- you mentioned the percentage. Did you feel like most of them were shots you've gotten this year? Was it that they weren't falling? STEPHEN THOMPSON JR.: Yeah, I think we did get some good looks around the basket and from the perimeter. But you still have to give credit to their defense. They had a solid defensive game plan and they switched man and zone throughout the game, and that kind of threw us off a little bit. Q. It was mentioned to the players earlier about being tired. But you said last night there were going to have to be a lot of ice baths. Do you feel like it was hard to come out with a ton of energy from a physical standpoint tonight? WAYNE TINKLE: Yeah, these guys have played four, five AAU games. They've played less guys than us even though they didn't play last night. We're not going to use that. Our guys didn't play to the level that we know we could, but we battled, and that's what we're going to continue to build off of. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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