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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 8, 2018Maurice JosephJair BoldenWashington, D.C. Saint Louis 70, George Washington 63 MAURICE JOSEPH: I want to give a lot of credit to Saint Louis for weathering the storm there. I thought we played a great first half and they stormed back, made a bunch of shots and did a tremendous job. But more so than that, I want to thank my seniors, who are playing their last game from Jack Granger, my manager, who has been tremendous his whole career, a complete team and program guy; Bo Zeigler for coming here and kind of building some of the culture that I envisioned for this program moving forward in the near future, in his one year, he made me a better coach; Pat Steeves, extremely, extremely proud of him and the way he's been able to kind of take his career back into his own hands after it being stripped away from him with injury after injury after injury, and not giving in to all that and still having a great two years here at GW. I can't thank him enough for what he's been able to do here. And Yuta, I don't think anybody's, in my time here, certainly no one's given more to the program than Yuta Watanabe does, especially when the lights are off and after hours when no one's watching. I don't think there's anybody that's giving more to the university and to the program, so I want to thank my guys there. Proud of our team and the way we battled back in the second half of the year. We had a young team. We had a very tough schedule to start. We did okay in the non-conference, took some lumps. We had a rough month of January, and a low-character team would have folded and packed it in, but they certainly did not do that. I'm extremely proud of our guys for how they responded to such adversity, being so young. Now I'm extremely excited to get into the off-season and build off of this momentum and really take things to the next level in our development, in our program. Really proud of this guy here. No one -- I'm probably the hardest on him out of any of my guys but he takes it like a soldier every single day. Him and I have a good relationship. We talk about that. But he's made of steel, man, he's made of steel. In these last two games, what he's capable of, and he's unselfish. He's a team guy, so I'm proud of Jair, as well, but credit to Saint Louis for playing a really, really good game, especially the second half, and making subpoena really big shots. Q. What are your thoughts about Yuta right now? Given his career but also the way things ended tonight with his injury? JAIR BOLDEN: I mean, I just told Yuta in the locker room that he's been a guy that has given us underclassmen something to strive toward. Like Coach said, he's extremely hard working, and a lot of guys that are 6-9 and as talented as he is don't always work as hard as he does. So he's a benchmark for all of us to reach. You know, we thank him for that. He's been our leader for two years, for the two years I've been here. He's been the best defender on the team, the best scorer on the team, and I have never played with a guy in my years of life that has done so much in a game and off the court and in the locker room. Obviously he went down and guys, you know, guys like me are supposed to step up when your best player goes down. But wasn't able to get it done for Yuta tonight, and that's, you know, that's tough. Q. You held them to five made baskets the first half, 21 points. What was working for you guys then and what changed second half? MAURICE JOSEPH: We were rebounding better in the first half than we were in the second half. They didn't have as many second-chance points as they did in the second half. And I don't know, in the first half -- I don't know, I'm not really sure exactly what changed as far as X's and O's. We had the same game plan moving forward. We had same game plan the second half as the first half. I guess it was just an effort thing. Q. Their pressure in the second half got ten points off turnovers. What did they do defensively to really put you guys back on your heels? MAURICE JOSEPH: Nothing that we didn't expect. We know they play their 1-3-1 and they switch back to man when you get the ball below the free throw line or into the corners. What we weren't able to do is handle that -- I wouldn't even call it pressure, their three-quarter court or halfcourt 1-3-1, extended 1-3-1. We weren't able to get them back into their man and attack off it. We let it make us stagnant a little bit, which is what they want. They want to take the air out of the ball. We didn't do a good enough job of once we got them to reshape and matchup in their man to running offense and getting the shots that we wanted to get. They forced us into some tough shots and we also had some really shaky turnovers, some whacky plays; the pass to the wing on Terry that goes through his hands. We just didn't execute the way we did in the first half, and we let their zone make us stagnant, you know what I mean. That was a shame because I thought we played really, really well in the first half, and we also dealt with some foul trouble. Pat Steeves and Bo having a lot of foul trouble in the second half hurt us some, too, especially on the glass, since they are so good on the offensive glass and we needed those guys to rebound for us. Foul trouble hurt us, as well, and that was tough. When we went to zone to kind of play some of those guys who did have fouls to kind of hide them and save them a little bit; then they started hitting threes, in addition to getting offensive rebounds because it's tougher to rebound their zones. It was kind of just a collage of unfortunate events for us that occurred. So credit them, though. Credit them. They did a tremendous job of making us stagnant in their 1-3-1. We didn't do a good enough job of executing. Q. How it you see Yuta's injury, and at that point, what did you tell your team? I assume knowing that Yuta probably wasn't going to return to the game? MAURICE JOSEPH: Well, I mean, I saw in front of me, he was driving, guy was running with him. I thought it was a foul to be honest with you. He stuck his foot out there and he rolled his foot, rolled his ankle. You know, I was hoping it wasn't as bad as it was, obviously, and I'm still not sure exactly what happens. I'm glad the X-rays were negative and we're hoping he's fine. But what I told our guys, what we always tell our guys with injuries, hey, next man up. We have a lot of basketball up and we've got to go grinding and rebounding and defending and do all the things we need it do to win. It wasn't a lot of time spent on, hey, Yuta is out, we have to go -- it's just, all right, let's keep playing. Let's do what we need to do. I thought for the most part, we stayed the course, man. Like we missed the front end of a one-and-one, we missed a wide open three, we had a couple opportunities that, you know, we just didn't take advantage of. In a game like this, that type, against a team who takes the air out of the ball and plays junk defenses and all that kind of stuff, you've got to be able to make shots and capitalize on those opportunities, and we simply didn't when we needed to. Q. First half, you controlled the paint offensively. Once French got going in there and they are getting fouled, how difficult was that to handle both them scoring inside with both Johnson and Bess hitting the threes? MAURICE JOSEPH: It was tough. French is such an aggressive player, that he always gets people into foul trouble. He went to the line seven times but they went to the line as a team, you know, 36 times and this is unacceptable. We pride ourselves on not fouling. We've been one of the best teams in the country at not fouling all year, you know, and then we have 22 fouls a night and that us because the guys that were fouling were the guys we needed to rebound: Bo, Pat. We needed those guys in there, and that hurt us. But then when they went to their 1-3-1 and we went to our four-guard lineup to kind of have more shooters and ball handers out there with their pressure, you know, we weathered the storm there. We weren't fouling as much. But at that point, you know, we're in our 2-3 zone and then they started hitting those shots like you mentioned. I credit them. They are not a great three-point shooting team by any means. Typically Jalen Johnson is a guy who hits the bulk of their threes and he hit four of them today for them. They only hit seven of them, but they were huge ones and timely ones. We had a miscommunication in our 2-3 zone, they got a big one. Jalen Johnson was about 25 feet away and we're in our 2-3 zone and he just lined it up from really deep and he knocked it in. They hit shots. They hit shots and sometimes on the other ends, we were just stagnant. We were stagnant, couldn't get the shots we wanted to get. Again, credit them. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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