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MAUI JIM MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 20, 2018Travis SteeleZach HankinsQuentin GoodinLahaina, Maui, Hawaii SDSU - 79, Xavier - 74 MEGAN GODFREY: Coach give us an opening thought on tonight's, this morning's game. TRAVIS STEELE: I thought we started off the game really well, obviously, got out to an early lead. We have to be able to put 40 minutes together and not turn it on and off. Give San Diego all the credit in the world though, they got a couple tremendous players in Jalen McDaniels and Devin Watson who are tremendous players. They fought back, they, the Mike Tyson old saying, you find out what your plan is once you get punched and their plan was they punched right back and we didn't have a response. I thought to start the second half it was a little bit better, but again it's kind of, the game wore on they pulled away. But again give San Diego all the credit in the world, they deserved to win that game, they outplayed us of the. MEGAN GODFREY: Questions for the players, please. Q. Quentin, you had a career high 20 points, but the team was ahead by 19 and lost that lead. Are you discouraged at all by the fact that you guys have struggled to play with a lead and be consistent? QUENTIN GOODIN: I wouldn't say discouraged is the word. I feel like we're still trying to figure it out. I feel like this tournament's really good for us, get away from home, find out our team chemistry, we're still trying to figure out our roles and take care of the missing pieces from last year. I feel like San Diego State, they're a good team, they gave us their best shot and I feel like we just keep that lead we win the game. I feel like our minds drifted during the game and we didn't stay focused throughout the game and that's what caused us to lose. Q. Zach, everything kind of seemed to go right for the first 10 minutes. What went wrong after that? ZACH HANKINS: Kind of the same thing as what Q said. Just our minds started wand erring and that's kind of been an issue for us, we just need to work on staying focused, but we still have a lot of time to grow and a lot of time to peak at the end of the season. Q. Zach, does that surprise you, having three grad transfers and a couple guys that have been in the program that you would, even though you have new pieces, that focus would be a problem? ZACH HANKINS: It is a lot of new pieces and we still have a lot of chemistry to gain but we're getting closer every day and we're learning each other's games every day more and more. So I fully believe as the season progresses we'll just continue to get better and better and better. Q. For both players, it seemed like last year you had some guys who in that situation could settle everybody down, kind of stabilize things. Is this team still looking for that guy or those guys to be able to kind of steady the ship in those moments? QUENTIN GOODIN: I wouldn't -- not really. I feel like if we didn't drift our mind we wouldn't have put ourself in that situation. We would have kept that lead. I feel like at this point of the season I just feel like we got to lock in because it happens in practice too and I feel like we just got to focus even more. I feel like as a captain it is my job to keep those guys in check. So I guess I'll figure that out. ZACH HANKINS: I would say our captains are continuing to break out into those roles and doing that a lot better. Q. For both players, just what changed for San Diego State? What did they start doing differently? When they were down 19, how were they able to get back into that? ZACH HANKINS: I think that we lost focus defensively. We started playing out of our own system and so we would help in too much and just give them wide open rhythm threes and they started hitting those. So that's really been the main thing we got to do is just stay focused, stay locked in on D even when we're up that much. QUENTIN GOODIN: Just go off of that, they stuck to their system I feel like. They smelled blood and they got more aggressive, whereas to us we kind of faded away when the crucial moment kind of hit and adversity hit. They just got more aggressive and were kind of trusting each other. I feel like we hurt ourself more this game than they hurt us. MEGAN GODFREY: We'll take questions for coach. Q. I heard the same thing from both coaching staffs after yesterday's loss and today's, hey, that's a really good team and they're going to get better. Even in a loss like this can you see some of that progress and see this team improving going forward? TRAVIS STEELE: Yeah, I think it's obviously a long season. We're going to look a lot different in December and January because the games like this. San Diego State's a good team, they're a well coached team. We got a lot of room for growth on both ends of the floor, that's for sure. But I do think we're getting better. Give San Diego State all the credit in the world for the win today. Q. If there were probably one or two things you want to see improved with this team over the next game, what are those things you want to focus on? TRAVIS STEELE: I would say two things. I would say number one when our guys drive the ball it's not my turn, you know, it's like -- I feel like we keep on pressing the repeat button on a song, a bad song, and it keeps happening over and over and over and over and over again and at some point it's got to change to get a different result. And again I feel like a lot of times like we're not competing against Auburn, we weren't competing against San Diego State, we're competing against ourselves. We have to be smarter and we have to be able to make great decisions once we get there because we're getting the ball to the paint a lot, but we're taking a lot of bad shots once we get there. When you have three guys on you, it's not a good shot. Somebody is wide open. The game's got to be played slow and again I think we're asking more out of our guys that are returning, they weren't put in those roles last year. Quentin wasn't, Naji wasn't, Paul wasn't and those are three of our primary playmakers off the bounce and I think those guys have to continue to grow in that area for us to be a good team. And I think defensively I think it's staying at home on shooters, again it happened over and over again today against San Diego State, where I think that like the Devin Watson kid would drive the ball all of a sudden we would help off the ball side corner, we leave a wide open for a three, a rhythm three for a guy that could really shoot the ball. Again staying locked in, especially in the second half when the defense is away from us has been an issue with our team so far. Q. You opened the game five of seven on threes and a few of those are pretty contested. Was this just a case of you made some really, really hard shots and you just missed them or what, you went from that to missing 13 straight. TRAVIS STEELE: No, I thought we had some pretty good looks early on to be honest. I think Elias took one tough one after he had had a couple wide open ones. But I thought we had some really good looks early on. I think that obviously their defense tightened up as the game went on, but again I think it goes back to when we play the game the right way, when we drive the ball and we make the right reads, again, it has nothing to do with San Diego State, it has nothing to do with Auburn, nothing to do with our opponent tomorrow, if we do what we work on every single day in practice, like I told our guys, then I'll live with the results, we'll live with it, win or lose. But when we don't it's a problem and we got to get those fixed we got to stop being our own worst enemy, because I really feel like we're competing against ourselves. Part of it is new guys, new roles, there's no question about it, but you can't get board with the simplicity. You have to -- I always I'm a big baseball fan, like home run hitters strike out a lot, guys that get on base those are the guys that get paid a lots of money in baseball and we want guys that are getting on base, hit singles, trust each other, move the ball, make the right plays. And again it's a work in progress, obviously, but you can't get board with the simple plays. Q. Same question that I asked your players, how difficult is that transition when you have guys last year who seemed to just be able to steady the ship in those moments and having new guys who are trying to step into those roles this year? TRAVIS STEELE: It's difficult but at the same time there's no excuses no explanations with our program. There's no moral victories, we expect to win. We have to figure it out. Sooner rather than later. We got to get guys that are going to mature, grow, and in those areas, last year we relied on at the end of games we had a lot of close games last year we had a closer, Travon, and he made all the big plays or JP made several big plays as well and I don't think, sometimes I think the media's made a big narrative of it it's like, well, hey, like all these new guys getting thrusted in the same role that Travon and JP were. No, they're different players. They have to be them, be really good at what they do. And then I'm good with that. It's like I said, like I think again we our guys got to learn how to play with one another, how to share the basketball, make the right plays, not force it, which I thought we took a lot of forced shots in the second half and even later on in the end of the first half when they went on their run. I thought we were taking some forced shots and our guys don't mean to, they're not selfish guys they got to learn though it's our job as a coaching staff to teach those guys and help guide them to where they can learn and continue to get better in that area. Q. Ryan Welage played really well in the first two games and was one of your top scorers. Today he was pretty quiet, didn't take a shot until the second half. Was there any reason behind that or just the way the game was going? TRAVIS STEELE: I think it was the way the game was going I think San Diego State again give them credit, he played in their league the last few years, so they knew who he was pretty well. They did a good job making sure that they were on the catch every single time for Ryan. I thought Ryan got frustrated a little bit, you could probably tell. So again I think it's kind of game to game. There's going to be games where he's going to be good like against scoring, I know Zach had whatever it was, 15 off the bench or whatever, Ryan didn't have as good of a game offensively as he would like to have, but again he had a couple good looks, I thought he had the one really good look there in the second half, just missed it and that's okay. We'll live with that shot. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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