|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DALLASMarch 15, 2018Jim LarranagaLonnie Walker IVJa'Quan NewtonDallas, Texas Loyola - 64, Miami - 62 JIM LARRANAGA: Well, it's pretty simple to know why we call it March Madness. Unbelievable great game, both teams played very hard. We did some very good things and shot the ball over 50 percent, 44 percent from three, out-rebounded them. But was one big play after another, and it was a close contest throughout, and they made the last big play. They hit that three that basically won the game for them. Hats off to them, and congratulations to the Loyola basketball program. Q. JaQuon, can you kind of run us through that last play? JA'QUAN NEWTON: Lonnie was at the line. He had missed the shot, and he had an opportunity when they got the rebound to run, and I couldn't really see what happened because I wanted to go find my man. I just seen the ball go in the net. Q. You guys obviously see these kind of things happen and you never think it'll happen to you. You dream about you being the one that makes the big shot. Lonnie, how about you from that perspective, what's the feeling out there? LONNIE WALKER IV: After they made the shot, I mean, it's definitely a dagger to the heart. It for surely hurts because your teammates, such as JaQuon who's a senior, you come to the realization it's your last game with them. It definitely hurts seeing a shot like that go in, but I'm proud of my team and how we fought and how we played. Hats off to them, and hope they do well in the tournament. Q. Coach, we asked you a little bit the other day about the 6-11 seed. Now you're on the other side of that. Can you kind of describe that for us? JIM LARRANAGA: Well, as I said the other day, I don't think the seeds mean that much. Teams that make this tournament are really good, and whether you're a high seed or a low seed, it really depends on how you play. I thought we played well enough to win this game. We had our chances. We put ourselves in position to win, but so did Loyola. They did a good job. We pulled ahead of them in the second half, and they fought back, but I thought we made some very good plays. I thought the defensive stop that we got with the two-point lead with under ten seconds to go, I believe, I thought that was going to seal the victory for us. But something that happens quite often in this tournament, someone steps up and makes a huge shot, and I think it was Donte Ingram was trailing the play -- when Lonnie missed the free throw, Sam Waardenburg had the chance to get the offensive rebound. There was a battle, it went loose, and they came up with it. So it made it like a scramble getting back defensively. And I thought we guarded the first couple of guys correctly, and they were not able to shoot, but Ingram trailed the play, and they kicked it back to him. I thought the biggest statistic that separated us is they had 19 assists. We only had 11. They found the open man a little bit more than we did, despite the fact that we shot 51 percent from the field, better than their 47, and 44 percent from three better than their 38. And neither one of us shot well from the foul line. We shot 61 percent. They shot 44 percent. When I look at those numbers, I think to myself, we probably would have won the game, but we didn't. They made the last big play. Q. You talked about the 19 assists; was it a matter of their persistence offensively that allowed them to get free there once in a while? JIM LARRANAGA: No. What I thought they did very well was they set a lot of screens in the middle of the court and rolled the man to the basket, and sometimes our help defense was there and very good, but other times we were worried so much about them making threes that the help defender left early so he could cover a three-point shooter. They didn't throw it to the three-point shooter. They threw it to the roll man, and he ended up making the lay-up. We tried making adjustments in the first half, did a little bit better job in the second half, but not quite well enough to come out on top. Q. This is obviously the second straight early exit. This one obviously more competitive than the last one against Michigan State, but how do you view just the state of the program going forward and some of the pieces that you're going to have back and some of the pieces that might be going? JIM LARRANAGA: Well, the first thing is I thought these guys did a great job this year. When we started the season, we had five freshmen and four sophomores, only one senior. It was a very young group. Just to make it to the big dance I thought was a tremendous accomplishment. Secondly, we lost perhaps our best player in Bruce Brown midway through the ACC race, which made it even more challenging to finish as high as we did in the ACC and make the big dance. In today's college game, there's no way to predict at this early stage how you're going to look next year with the number of kids that transfer, guys that go pro, injuries, recruiting. What you see now would be great if we had everybody back next year. If we did, I'd feel very, very strongly that we'd have a great team. One of the things my staff and I have wanted to do and haven't been able to do is stay older, have a more experienced team. I think that plays very well into postseason. I think the older guys who have been through it normally play well. I think younger guys have it a little more challenging. Right now, we only have one scholarship senior. We have two guys sitting out. So if everybody would return, that would be like 11 guys. We still have two scholarships to give. But in today's game, I have no idea. I look around our league, and I can't tell you what's going to happen at those places, either, because guys are going pro, guys are transferring who don't play much, guys get injured and they're out, could be out for the season. We saw a lot of that this year with Bruce Brown and Donte Grantham and now De'Andre Hunter is hurt and missing the tournament. So it's very, very hard to predict this far in advance. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|