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MAUI JIM MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 20, 2018Sean MillerBrandon RandolphJustin ColemanLahaina, Maui, Hawaii Gonzaga - 91, Arizona - 74 MEGAN GODFREY: Start with an opening statement. SEAN MILLER: We knew Gonzaga was obviously an excellent team and, you know, for 20 minutes I thought we played with a lot of effort and played a great first half. For us to have 45 points we did a lot of things well in the first half and I thought had them on their heels about as much as you can. Maybe they uncharacteristically missed a couple of open threes but for the most part the first 20 minutes really favored us. And then obviously we were overwhelmed in the second half. Their defense, they started to switch both on and off the ball, not easy to do but the quickness that those two big guys had is very impressive. I mean they can switch out on guards, they really took us out of what we wanted to do and obviously a tale of two halves and they were the far superior team. The one stat that really blows my mind is that we had three assists in the game. I think what their defense did is they created a kind of a drive out of desperation, drive to shoot, drive to score and you have to move the ball, you have to share the ball and you have to be able to find open teammates. But that's as much to Gonzaga's credit as it is to our detriment. They were clearly the better team and especially in the second half, I mean it was 54-29 in the second half, I think that's really all you need to know. MEGAN GODFREY: Questions for the players. Q. Did you see any changes in Gonzaga's defensive coverages in the second half that surprised you? JUSTIN COLEMAN: First of all, I want to thank my Lord and Savior for this opportunity once again. And to answer your question, yeah, like coach said, they started to switch one through four, one through five, it was hard for to us run our offense. We started to drive and not, like coach says, drive to kick for others, we started to drive and kick for our own, which we shouldn't have done, that's what got us in the hole we were in. So they just started to switch one through four and one through five and it took us out of our offense. BRANDON RANDOLPH: Just add on, yeah, I think it was kind of hard. I believe like -- I just believe that we need to make that adjustment and we just didn't do that, so we just got to move on to the next game. Q. Justin, offensively I just curious two nights in a row now you played really well there and I didn't know if you feel like your confidence is up or was it also a case maybe of what was needed tonight and what you got? JUSTIN COLEMAN: I just play my game and I just took the open shots that I had. And my teammates played a big part in that, they created shots for me and also like they had to guard, Brandon went up and Brandon Williams who also led the team in scoring the first four games, so they just helped my game a lot easier. MEGAN GODFREY: Take questions for coach. Q. What are your thoughts on the technical and the foul that Chase got and he's been, like you said, a pretty sharp guy as far as the way he plays, what happened in that moment do you think? SEAN MILLER: I think the emotions got the best of Chase. He has to control his emotions in that situation. Really, we're not a deep team as it is, especially up front, losing him didn't help. And it really gave them adjust an extra surge of momentum at a very unique time in the game. Even though they were the better team through the first eight minutes of the second half, I don't have it in front of me, but at the 12 minute mark it was still really either way. They were up four points, but from the 12 minute mark all the way to the end -- and some of it is they wore us down, some of it is they're an excellent team. Rui, the development of him and just what he's become as a player, it's incredible, he's one of the best forwards that I think plays college basketball. I don't know if everybody gets the opportunity to see him, in this tournament they will, but he's a handful and like always Mark and his staff they just do such a great job of putting their best players in a position to hurt you. And right around that high post area he just has a really unique way of being able to face up and make the shot, drive it, and he's really physical. And again for the first half the same guys played in both halves, I was very happy with our effort, I didn't think we could play much better, certainly even defensively. But they wore us down and I thought their adjustments defensively, switching on and off the ball it kind of took us out of what we were doing. It's not easy to do that though. When you take your five man and you switch on to a guard and take your four man and you're switching out and they're able to do it, I think that says a lot about their talent on both side of the ball and those two big guys, Brandon Clarke and Rui tremendous front court, certainly one of the best, and if you look at our two bigs we were 1-6 from the floor three points. We need to get more out of them. And then our bench had one field goal and we played our bench quite a bit and we, guys who didn't start the game played five minutes, 14 minutes, 17 minutes, 18 minutes when you sub like that you need some production. They're better than they played, but I think fire power off the bench and a little bit more balance inside and outside will help us. Again, three assists, that's tough, man, there's not a lot of good basketball being played when you only have three assists. Q. I was surprised when I saw three assists, but also you did a good job of defending the three the first half and they kind of picked up. What did they do on the offensive end that allowed them to get better looks from you in terms of offensively? SEAN MILLER: They were great, they're a very balanced team. They can hurt you from behind the arc, they really are terrific in transition and there aren't many guards that are more experienced or better than Josh Perkins. He can score, he can make his teammates better, he's averaging eight assists a game and you can really see how he can do that. He's got a great group to play with, but it's hard to hold them down for 40 minutes from behind the arc. Again they were 2-11 from three at the half, maybe they missed a couple open ones, but our defensive effort and the togetherness through the first 20 minutes, we needed to be able to do that for 40 and we didn't have it in us. Q. You have to turn the page quickly, so tomorrow what are some of the things that you would like to see from your team tomorrow? You got to get them to put this behind and you got to get them to focus. What do you want to see from them tomorrow? SEAN MILLER: Well, I mean, I know Iowa State played very well today and I think they're a really good team, we're excited to have an opportunity to be 1-0 in this tournament. And when you look at the next two games, Gonzaga and either Duke or Auburn, that's not an easy, that's not an easy task for anybody. And right now we have to learn from this game, grow, and that's what a tournament like this really does. Everybody wants to win. There's going to be one team that's going to leave here with zero wins and they're going to be pretty good. Only one team will win all three games and then I think the rest of us will take what we did and then either build from it, learn from it and grow. And that's the team we want to be. But Auburn's exceptional, they're a team that I think can go deep in the NCAA tournament. And Gonzaga's that way, Duke's that way, so for us I think sharing the ball, seeing if we could have a little bit more balanced attack and defending a very, very strong team in transition as well. Q. I was wondering, when you talked about Gonzaga's defensive adjustments in the second half do you think that helped them cut down on the fouling too or was there something else? I mean a drastic difference between the amount you guys went to the line. SEAN MILLER: Yeah, I would say that it did. It was an adjustment that worked. For us, again, we're not a seasoned group, we're not a group that's been through a lot of different things together, so early in the year in November, change can affect us maybe more than other teams or a team, a few of our teams in the past. We'll learn from this game, we'll grow from it. We played some excellent basketball through 20, 24 minutes, even the first four minutes of the second half, maybe the first three minutes of the second half, we were continuing to play the game like we did in the first half. But Gonzaga's a better team than us and they really showed it in the second half. Q. Justin's offense just the last couple games, do you see, I mean you mentioned of course he had a couple of big time games at Alabama and earlier in his career, but did you see that coming out this week, does that surprise you at all? SEAN MILLER: Yes and no. He took -- he's playing with a lot of confidence. I think last night kind of fed into tonight's game. Thank goodness he was able to score the ball. A big reason we had the lead in the first half and why we were able to score at all in the second half was because of his efforts. But we have to be more balanced. Being able to get the ball inside, being able to drive the ball, pass, share it, that's the types of things that we have done well over the years and we have to kind of get back to being that team. Maybe we have to do it a different way, but just driving to shoot and it's not Justin, it's really our whole team, that gets you in trouble. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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