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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 9, 2018Mick CroninGary ClarkKyle WashingtonCane BroomeOrlando, Florida Cincinnati - 61, SMU - 51 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from Coach and then take questions for the student-athletes and Coach. MICK CRONIN: My opening statement is please ask questions of the players first, so they can go back and get some rest. Other than that, congratulations to SMU for showing the character that they have shown for the last two months of playing with half their team injured. And five weeks of Ben Emelogu playing with his shooting hand injured and couldn't take a shot, but he was still out there. So we have great respect for their program. So it was, for me, it was good to see them come down here and play as well as they have played down here, because they have had some unbelievably bad luck. That being said, the guys played hard enough to get a win in the second half. We picked it up on the defensive end, picked it up on the back board, and in honor of my Coach Huggins outfit today, we won without making shots, which he taught me 20 years ago. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions, please. Q. Cane and Gary and Kyle, nothing from the perimeter almost at all, all day today. Were they that good defensively or were you struggling that much offensively? CANE BROOME: They definitely played hard and we just didn't hit shots today, but granted them, they played hard defense, they rotated very well. GARY CLARK: Yeah, what Cane was saying. When teams are scrambling hard and playing hard, shots aren't always going to fall, so that's why you got to play defense like we did the second half. KYLE WASHINGTON: I just think it showed our versatility for us to be able to go inside. Gary got it going in the second half a little bit, and then you can't forget about Naz (Nysier) and Tre, they did a good job on our progressions on the zone offense, so I was happy about that. We just prevailed and we stayed persistent, so I was happy about that for our team. Q. For anybody, start with Gary, a team like SMU, heavy underdog to you guys, they're ahead four, five, six points, you're locked into the NCAA Tournament but is there any concern by you guys that, hey, if we lose this game, maybe we drop a seed, something like that? How concerned were you guys as that game got deeper and deeper? GARY CLARK: That's always a worry, but we're playing for more and we have to lock in and get defensive stops. You always want to try to get momentum, take each game, get momentum going on further. Q. At one point you guys were 0-for-10 from three-point range. How frustrating is it when you keep missing them like that, some of them were open looks they just weren't going down. Cane, I'll ask you because you finally made one that got you over the hump. CANE BROOME: It's definitely frustrating but Coach tells us all the time, you're not going to make always make shots. You're not going to win with offense all the time. Our main focus in the second half was defense, not really the shooting. We didn't actually even talk about shooting. Q. Gary, you get two points combined from Jarron and Jacob and you win anyway by 10. What does that say to you about your team or just how you responded to that? GARY CLARK: Just our depth. Guys come in, step in, you got Keith and Trevor come in, rebound the ball and being able to get stops defensively. Jarron, he led us in almost every category today when it comes to defense, rebounding, stuff like that. So it's not always going to be a good night, but as long as you contribute on the defensive end and help your team get the W, that's all you care about. THE MODERATOR: All right, thank you, gentlemen. We'll excuse you to the locker room. And we'll open it up to questions for Coach. Q. We have talked and you've talked for weeks about your bench is going to be key in post-season. MICK CRONIN: Oh, no doubt. Q. Just specifically when you're kind of I don't know if "trouble" is the description, but Tre and Naz both hit a couple baskets there. I guess is that kind of indicative of what you want to see? MICK CRONIN: They're really improving, they're still young players but for us player development is the key to what we do at Cincinnati and the way we do things. So making sure that these guys put in the time and believe that it's going to pay off, but it's not going to pay off if you don't put in the time. You don't just become better because you become a junior or senior. You become better because you work really, really hard at getting better and you care about it. So Tre and Naz have really improved. I think that we might have been down six when they went on a run of bringing us back, defensively and offensively, which is huge, huge for us. They maybe have helped us on the defensive end, but today they helped us on the offensive end. They got three field goals each, and I'm going to say at least maybe four of the six field goals they had were probably in the second half. So that being said, I'm going to make this point that, in my opinion, I tell guys this all the time, Jarron Cumberland, he was the player of the game. He had eight deflections, he had eight assists, he had two unbelievable offensive -- he had an offensive rebound off Nysier missed free throw and he just gives us a toughness that we need. He's just a real, real competitor. He's a real competitor. He's a guy, and he's a guy that scored 2,000-something points in high school, but he's becoming a winner and he helped us -- if it wasn't for him, we don't win this game. I think that of Tre and Naz as well. So you can play great without scoring, contrary to 99 percent of what the popular belief is in little league basketball. Q. What has Cane given you lately? And he's the guy that's been around, but this is kind of his first significant post-season. What do you expect from him as you go forward? MICK CRONIN: I just think he's finally comfortable. I think he's finally made the adjustment of his intensity level. I judge it by whether he turns the ball over, and I judge it by his defense. Because as you know, you saw him, he took 18 shots a game, which I kid him, you know, I got recruited at that level before I got hurt. I could have got up 18 shots a game, I would have got me some buckets. So I was messing with him. But it's just so different at the level he's at now, the energy you have to expend just to take care of the ball against the bigger physical players he's playing against at our level. That was adjustment number one. Number two is to defend against a different caliber of player at the level we're at. So I just think he's had to work harder, practice harder, have better life habits, have better practice habits and takes time. Sometimes until you fail, you don't really commit to doing what you need to do to get better. So I give him the credit, because here in the last two or three weeks I don't know, you guys might have the numbers, but I mean his consistencies been tremendous here over the last few weeks which has made us a much better team. It just gives us another way to beat you, because of the firepower he can give you on offense but it's irrelevant if he's turning it over. See, today he did it without; he has 13 points, two assists, no turnovers. Q. How much of the struggle today offensively was the tentativeness you expect in a first game of a tournament? MICK CRONIN: I think you always -- I've always said this, I don't like when coaches come in and say stuff like that. I think the other team is the reason, the actual game itself and the team. We're not tentative. Yeah, I just don't believe in stuff like that. So I think if we didn't make shots, SMU played really active in their zone. They didn't make it easy on us, they put game pressure on us. So I give them the credit for that. I just I think that should always be the case. I think it's arrogant as a coach to think, oh, we would have won by 30, we just missed every open shot. Well, they missed them too. So I think you got to give the other team credit. You got to look -- Akoy Agau is in his fifth year. McMurray has been around. He's an all-league player at South Florida. He's an all-league player now for the last three weeks the way he's been playing. Emelogu is in his sixth year. Jimmy Whitt's in his third year of college. I mean, those guys are good players. They just don't have the depth. But like the four guys I mentioned are veteran, talented, top-hundred players out of high school. They're good players. Tim is as good a coach as I've ever coached against. So I think you got to realize, Emelogu, he's been playing with a bad hand/wrist because he had to. He couldn't even shoot the ball for four weeks. You watch their film, you could see he couldn't even shoot. At one point he was the best three-point shooter in the country earlier in the year. Leading the nation. So I just think you got to give SMU credit for why the game was competitive today. I think it's unfair not to do that. Q. What's behind the Bob Huggins tribute thing? MICK CRONIN: Well, the Coach of the Year Award I was fortunate enough to win, so I obviously sent some messages for guys that I worked for. Obviously I wouldn't have, I could have still been banging around at Woodard High School if he didn't hire me. And he knows the story and we have little story when he met me, and I didn't have -- one time I went to pull out some money, he didn't have any money. We were trying to get out of a parking garage. I was a high school coach. I had this terrible looking wallet, a broken rubber band and stuff, and he's like, "Can you not even afford a wallet?" So we always kid, a long ways from the days where I couldn't have a wallet. So he knew me when I couldn't even afford a wallet or a rubber band that didn't break. So a little tribute to him. Thank you for helping me. Q. What was that a windbreaker you had on? MICK CRONIN: I don't know. Too many useless details. I'm worried about lunch right now. Let's go. Q. Me too. MICK CRONIN: No, I know you are, trust me. Q. I'll go with you. MICK CRONIN: Okay, you're buying. Q. Maybe you forgot to bring a suit? MICK CRONIN: I got three of them. I just tricked everybody. It's something I thought about. So tomorrow I'll wear a real expensive suit like Rick Pitino. Q. After that big run that SMU embarked on, there was a little stoppage and then y'all came out and went on a 10-0 run yourself and really limited SMU's shooting ability. What did you tell your team and what kind of judgments did you make? MICK CRONIN: Well, I always whisper very kind things in timeouts and dead balls to my players and try to sweeten them up, get them to respond that way. But look, they did what they had to do because with their numbers, they're trying to spread you out, and shoot the three and go five-out as much as possible, create mismatches and hopefully you help off somebody and let it fly. That's really, they only have one guy, the big Akoy down in the post is really their own post guy. Chargois is more of a shooter for a big guy. So we just did a better job -- as the game went on we adjusted more to what they were doing to us on offense we did a better job. I think early in the game we had a "woe is me". "Oh, we actually got to spread out and move our feet and guard these guys?" I mean they're not just going to take bad shots . Well, no, they're well coached and they have veteran players and they played really well yesterday, and for the seven guys they got like I said they're finally healthy. So I think it just took us time to adjust to the stuff they were running. But would I like to give credit to Tre Scott and Nysier Brooks. That run you're alluding to, they were in the game. They did great on the defensive end and they also scored inside against SMU's zone. So whenever you can have two guys come off the bench that back up all-league players and really turn the game around for you, it's a luxury as a coach. It's big, big, really big for us. So hopefully it's a big confidence booster for those two kids. Q. You talked about Tre and Nysier's development as players and how big they were today. How much of the seniors, Kyle and Gary, helped them out along the way? MICK CRONIN: Well, our team I'm a very lucky coach that my seniors are a great, great people and they're constantly trying to help the younger players. At all times. They're always talking to them, whether it's trying to keep their spirits up because I was maybe hard on them in practice, if you can imagine that, or just but basketball stuff really. Little things with basketball, and if they were in here they would tell you that. Tre and Nysier would tell you. There's no two better seniors in the country than Gary and Kyle as far as leadership, character, people, caring about others, they're awesome. So they have been a big part of those guys' development, and I can't say enough about that. I mean, that's not coach talk and anybody that's interviewed them or knows them, knows that, how good of people they are. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. MICK CRONIN: Thank you guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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