|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: WICHITAMarch 15, 2018Travis DeCuireMichael OguineAhmaad RorieWichita, Kansas Michigan - 61, Montana - 47 THE MODERATOR: Coach, why don't you look back at this game and give us your comments. COACH DECUIRE: It's a good basketball team. You know, if you'd have told me going in the game that they'd have a negative assist-to-turnover ratio and turn it over 14 times, we'd take nine more shots and basically break even on the glass with eight offensive rebounds to their five, I'd probably tell you we won. I thought our guys competed. They fought. They defended. Michigan made some adjustments in the first half in our ball screen coverage, which I knew they would do. And once we made our adjustment, we were fine the rest of the way. But it cost us some buckets, and Charles Matthews steps up and has a big game. If you look at it, he's really the difference in this ball game, because both teams struggled offensively. We didn't have one guy over 50 percent. He was the only guy for them, outside of Simmons, 3 for 3. And so it was a defensive struggle, and their defense was a little better than ours tonight. But all respect to that team. It's a very well-coached team, and like I said yesterday, probably one of the better coached teams in the country. They don't beat themselves. They defend and they don't take bad shots. So that's going to be a very difficult team to beat. I'm proud of my team. We won a lot of games this year. We fought. We've had adversity that we fought through. And I'm excited to have all these guys back, most of them, with the exception of Fab, and see if we can bring it back and maybe perform a little better this time. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for our student-athletes, please. Q. To have your season come to an abrupt end tonight, just how are you feeling right now? MICHAEL OGUINE: To get to this point, you know, it's still an accomplishment to win our conference tournament, to be able to represent and win a big league like the Big Sky, it's an honor in and of itself. But like you said, to have the season end abruptly in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, it's not the best feeling. But I'm proud of the way we fought. Even though our shots weren't really falling, we still played hard. I feel like we did a good job of representing Montana basketball. Not too many teams knew much about us going in. But I feel like after watching this game they know we're a team that plays hard and competes no matter who we play against. AHMAAD RORIE: Yeah, first of all, it was good for us to help Fab get here. He's a senior. He's our leader and captain. So I know he feels good about finally getting here, especially allowing us to do that. Like Mike said, we didn't want it to end like this, especially this soon. We thought we could come out here and get a win, but Michigan is a very good team. They're well coached. They don't turn the ball over, and they play good defense. So right now we're going to soak in the good season that we did have and just get back to work in a couple of weeks. Q. When you guys have a tough stretch like you did in the second half and you can't get the lid off the basket, you guys are the two top scorers on the team, do you feel like it's your duty to start shooting and hoping something falls, or maybe help facilitate more, and what worked and what really didn't work there? MICHAEL OGUINE: Well, Coach Trav puts a lot of confidence in myself and Ahmaad. He gives a lot of responsibility on the offensive end, and like you said, I feel like it's kind of our duty when our offense isn't really -- our shots aren't falling. We have to be able to go and make plays for ourselves or others, whatever the situation calls for. I feel like credit to Michigan. That's a great team. They were locked in on Ahmaad and myself. They didn't make it easy for us all night. It was tough to get looks. It just comes down to it wasn't our night offensively. The good thing, our defense was tough so we were able to hang around a little bit. But at the end of the day, it's tough to win a game against a team like Michigan if you shoot 32 percent from the field. So we still have to be better. But at the end of the day, I'm still proud of the way we fought, regardless of the outcome. AHMAAD RORIE: It's Michael and my job to put the ball in the basket when we need some buckets, but the lid wasn't coming off. But we still did play good defense, but Coach just kept trusting us putting the ball in our hands, but especially myself I had some forced looks, the charge and stuff, but just try and get something going towards the rim and try and get the lid off. It's tough when that doesn't happen. And Michigan does pack the lane in so it makes it hard for you to get in there. They help, they help the helpers. So threes weren't falling tonight, but proud of how we fought. Q. You had that long power outage. Did you see that as a positive, as a time to maybe reset your mind, or would you rather be out there and just not have any sort of break at all? MICHAEL OGUINE: I think you'd rather get the flow of the game, have it be continuous. They were going on a run there. So you would think that it would be in our favor maybe to slow down their momentum, but I know I speak for myself and my teammates when I say we were ready to go the whole night. That's not an excuse or anything. We're not saying that was the reason we paid poorly in the second half, but just to answer your question I feel like you just want to get the game going. You don't want to have pauses in the action like that. I'm sure the fans don't either. AHMAAD RORIE: Yeah. They were going on a run, so when you have a power outage, we wanted that to slow the run down, but obviously it didn't. They kept making shots and playing good. But we were ready to go either way whether the power was out or not. We wanted to just stay within the flow of the game. Q. What was the experience like for you guys? What was it like going out in warmups, and was it fun to play in this kind of atmosphere? MICHAEL OGUINE: It was a great experience. I really like the city of Wichita. They came out to support. I know they just wanted to watch great basketball, and us being the underdog they kind of took us in as their team to root for. I feel like we did a good job of, like I said earlier, the state of Montana, representing the way we practiced all year for this minute right here. We just wanted to put our best foot forward. Like I said, our shots weren't falling. Things didn't go well the whole game, but I think to be here, I think you just can't -- you can't really take away from the experience just because we lost the game. I feel like it was a huge step for our program. Huge step for some of our guys. I know Ahmaad has been here before. But a lot of experience coming in next year. We lose Fab, but everyone else is going to be coming back. And we're going to be hungry, and hopefully we'll have a better result next year, and hopefully we're here again. AHMAAD RORIE: Yeah, it was a good experience, especially after last week, having to grind out three wins. Like he said, city of Wichita really came out, and they were really hospitable to us, you know, allowed us to play in their arena. The fans were great. Our fans travel pretty good, parents and stuff. So it was just great for us to play in front of them. We wanted to get a win, but the experience was definitely great. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. At this time we'll take questions for the head coach. Q. Coach, Coach Beilein was very complimentary about the defense job you did on his team. COACH DECUIRE: I thought we executed well. There was just a short stretch where they made some adjustments in our ball screen coverage they took advantage of, and you would expect that out of a well-coached team. And then from there we competed well, and we held them to one shot most of the time. To only give up five offensive rebounds is huge. You know, I just thought we just didn't do a good enough job offensively executing and getting the shots we wanted. But like I said, that's about as good of a coached team as I've seen in a long time, and I look forward to watching them and following them in the tournament. Sometimes when you lose to a team in this situation, you root for them and hope they make it all the way. Q. You mentioned a couple of times about how well coached Michigan is. A lot is made of John Beilein's offense. How difficult is that to prepare for and then to see in front of you? COACH DECUIRE: To me, when I say someone is well coached, they don't beat themselves. You'll make mistakes. There's human error. But I can't recall one possession where they took a bad shot. There will be defensive breakdowns because the offense can manipulate things, but on the offensive end for them, I just can't remember someone taking a questionable shot and allowing us to get some momentum or maybe a low rebound or whatnot. When they shot the ball, guys knew they were going to shoot it. And to me those are teams that don't beat themselves. And so I don't know how many teams are like that in this field. A lot of teams, they play, they fly around, they're aggressive. They give on maybe a questionable shot here and there, an error on aggression. I think this team plays very smart basketball. And when they play that way, it's just very difficult to manipulate things and make things happen in your favor. Q. Was there anything that you would have changed, Xs and Os-wise, heading into the game? COACH DECUIRE: Yeah. I would have put a hoop in there that might have been a little bigger. No. You know, I think you've gotta come in and play your style of basketball. You gotta do what got you here. And if you try to do anything different, you're not going to be aggressive, you're not going to play instinctively. And I thought we did that. Our biggest issue was we win the paint. We broke even 26-26 in the paint. Our bigs go 3 for 11. 3 for 11. So the three guys that typically we would go inside and get some things in the paint from couldn't get it going. And there were stretches where I'll go small, spread them out and move. But this is a very physical basketball team. And playing through the bump is easy to say but hard to emulate in practice. So it was kind of a game-time adjustment, and we just didn't do a good enough job of that. Q. Coach, to a question earlier, did you find the power outage frustrating or good opportunity to kind of coach your guys up a little bit more? COACH DECUIRE: No. We needed that timeout. They were rolling. And we were in trouble a little bit. We needed to freshen up. We needed to talk. We needed to make some adjustments. I was going to probably call one the next possession anyway. On the flip side, I think we got tight, though. I think guys like Mike, who tighten up pretty quick, took a minute to get going again. But, you know, when a team is rolling on you a little bit, you need a timeout. You know, last week I took one without calling one because Eastern Washington had some momentum, and we needed to stop them. So I thought the timing of that was pretty good. It was just a little long. Q. What are you going to remember the most about this team and this season? COACH DECUIRE: Their heart, their passion, their desire to perform. I think I have a group of young men that gave me everything they had. And you can't say that for every team every year. And these guys were all in. They say family, and most of the time when you have a team that says family, because pretty much every team I've had says that, sometimes you have to define it for them. And I didn't have to do that for this team. They act like family on and off the court and they play like family. And I'm proud of these young men, and, you know, we got a tough draw. And it was a tough basketball game. They showed up; they performed. They gave us everything they had. I'll be talking about this team for a long time. 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
|