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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 17, 2019Mark SchmidtLaDarien GriffinWashington, D.C. Saint Louis 55, St. Bonaventure 53. COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, I thought it was a great college game. I thought we played extremely well in the first half. You know, both offensively and defensively. We rebounded the ball well. The second half give Saint Louis credit. They came after us. They are a very good halfcourt defensive team. They took away some of our actions and really made it a one-on-one game. I thought going into the game, if someone was going to tell me we were going to hold them to 55 points and 57 percent from the field and 18 percent from threes, and we're going to out-rebound them by three, I thought we'd have a great chance of winning. And we did. You know, we had three shots at the end, two really good ones, I think, good looks that we missed. But give our guys credit. We were down, whatever, eight, with a couple minutes left and we have a chance to win the game. So disappointing, but at the same time, you know, where we came from, it's pretty remarkable what these guys have done. But give Saint Louis credit. They played well. I thought Goodwin was terrific and to me, he was the difference. I thought we did a good job on Isabell, on Bess, but they got a lot of good players, well-coached, and we wish them luck. Q. Congratulations on a remarkable season and advancing to the A-10 Tournament. That you can about that start that you had going on that, I think it was that 10- or 13-2 run. LaDARIEN GRIFFIN: Early on we knew it was important for the first five minutes, they were going to come out strong and we needed to come out strong and set the tone. I think we did that well. It was just hard for us to kind of maintain it throughout the game, so yeah. Q. You guys have been such a good second half team lately. What is it that they were able to do that knocked you guys off your game? LaDARIEN GRIFFIN: Kind of like Coach said, they took away some of our actions. Made us catch the ball further out and just made it tough on us. We just -- we missed a lot of shots in the second half. We weren't getting -- we didn't get to the free throw line enough, and we didn't get enough stops at the end. When you can't play defense at the end and get your stops, it's going to be hard when you don't score and you're going to fall behind like we did. Q. Courtney Stockard fouls out at the end of the game. Do you feel like that was a difference-maker once he went out? LaDARIEN GRIFFIN: We played without Courtney before. I don't think it was that much of a difference. He hit a nice shot. We missed him out there, yeah, for sure, but guys stepped up and we just missed a shot at the end. Q. You and Courtney are so tight. What did you guys talk about in the locker room after the game? LaDARIEN GRIFFIN: We didn't really talk. We'll probably talk more about it later, but probably in this moment, we just let it sit in and we talk about it behind closed doors. Q. I know it's certainly difficult right now after a loss, but can you guys as players even take a moment right now to just reflect on the fact that, you know, that you're even in the championship game today; that you're 20 minutes from making the NCAA Tournament, after everything you went through earlier this year, can you appreciate that now? LaDARIEN GRIFFIN: Yeah, for sure. A lot of teams would have folded in that situation, but these guys didn't. We stayed tight. We worked on everything, kind of back from the beginning, the basics, and we just started running -- when we started getting confidence and running off wins, just the run we went on, winning, what was it, 10-1, 9-1 in the last ten, I'm proud of these guys. These guys are going to be really, really good, but just to be part of that is something special. I don't think anybody would have thought we would have been in this situation. Q. You've got a heck of a freshman group that played as well as they did with Osun and Kyle and Welch. How high would you say the expectations are coming into next season? LADARIEN GRIFFIN: I mean, I hope they win it. They are good enough. Those guys are going to work. They are going to use this as motivation. As long as that group stay together, they going to be special and I'm going to be rooting for them from wherever I'm at. Q. Congratulations on advancing to the championship game. It's been such a thrill working with this program. Tell us about what you're looking most forward to about for next season with this freshman class. COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, it's hard to answer. You know, we got talented guys, but you know, we're disappointed. You know, we'll give them a couple weeks off and go back to work, but we've got a good group. The future's bright. We've got to bring in some more guys, but they are a talented group of guys that are going to continue to get better. Q. Tremendous run here over the second half of the season. What do you say to guys like Courtney and LaDarien, seniors who have been with you for years, when you go out like this? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: It's hard. It's devastating. You put so much into this, you know, and not in the last couple years; a lifetime. These kids have been dreaming about this since they were a little kid playing in their backyard or shooting hoops on the street. They have been terrific for us. They have had a lot of wins. They helped bring the program back, and what they did this year was terrific. You know, LaDarien alluded to, things weren't going well and they just kept on fighting, and you know, it's disappointing that we lost, but if somebody -- we were talking to one referees before the game and he worked our Cayman Islands game, and he goes, if I had to bet that you guys were going to be in the championship game after what I saw down there, it's a miracle. So all the credit goes to our players and those two seniors, and Nelson, too. They helped lead us back from 4-9, 4-10, to having a chance to -- one shot away from going to the NCAA Tournament. Q. Considering everything you guys have accomplished over the last several years, winning an A-10 Championship, making the NCAA Tournament, winning an NCAA Tournament game, what you did this year in getting this team to this game today, how do you view that in a larger context? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: It's not about me. It's about our players and our staff. You know, when things aren't going well, as a coach, as a coaching staff, you reassess and you can either stop working and give in and say, this is going to be an off year, or you know, you can go to work and work harder, and that's what we did. But no matter what we did, we can work as hard as we want; it's about the players, and they have to buy into it, and they did. That's the thing that I'm most proud of is that those guys, they were coachable. They understood that they were making mistakes; they weren't good enough and they needed to get better. Kids nowadays, it's always someone else's fault, but they took ownership and they understood that we weren't playing well and part of this was the injuries, but they kept at it, and they didn't give in and that's why we're here today. Q. Obviously the rebounding category wasn't strong enough today. How big of an aspect do you think that played in the fact that Saint Louis was able to get so many offensive rebounds and get second chance buckets? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: We out-rebounded them by three, so going into the game, we got out-rebounded at halftime at our place by 14, and we were out-rebounded at our place by nine -- totally. So our goal was if we could keep it within five, and we were plus three. So as I said in my opening statement, if I was going into the game and someone said we were going to out-rebound them by three, that's a great effort by our guys, and they had 14 offensive rebounds and we had 13. So it wasn't the rebounding part of it that lost the game for us. Q. My question to you is: How did you feel about the fan turnout today? A lot of St. Bonaventure fans in the building. COACH MARK SCHMIDT: It's always amazing. They travel. They are so passionate, and if someone's never been up to Olean. You need to come up. It just is passionate fans. They love basketball, and that place was three-quarters Bonaventure people and we've got 29,000 alums, one of the smallest schools in the country, and for them to show up like that -- that's not unusual. That happens all the time wherever we go and that's why I'm so proud to be the coach. Q. You said rebounding wasn't the problem. COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah. Q. Is there any one specific area that you think contributed mostly? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, we couldn't score. Like I said, we held them to 55 points. They were 37 percent, 18 percent from threes. We out-rebounded them. We couldn't score. Give Saint Louis credit. They did a really good job of taking away some of our actions and making it a one-on-one game, and we don't have one-on-one type players. But it was more offensively. We scored 19 points in the second half. But our goal was to hold them under 60 points and I think this is the first game that we lost when we held an opponent under 60. You know, it was more offense, but at the same time, as I said, we had a couple shots to win the game, you know, and that's just how it goes. From a defensive standpoint, from a rebounding standpoint, we did what we wanted to do. We just didn't play well enough offensively in the second half. Q. We talk about the grown men that Saint Louis has, and even with how good the freshmen have been for you, do you feel like they were overwhelmed a little bit today? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: I don't know if overwhelmed is the right word, but they are physical, you know, and they are -- sometimes, you know, they had 30, 40, 50 pounds on us. That's no excuse. They have 30, 40, 50 pounds and we still out-rebound them. You know, so it wasn't an effort thing. Just they are a good defensive halfcourt defensive team. They couldn't get much on the open court, so we were attacking them five-on-five, and it's hard, French is back there blocking shots. So that was, from a physicality standpoint, it was defensively, they got into us and did a good job of getting into the gaps, and as I said, taking away our initial action, and part of it was that physicality. Q. Obviously Courtney wasn't on the floor of that last possession, but what was the plan for you guys in that last 14 seconds? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: We were playing to win. You know, with Courtney out, I thought if we went to over time, it would be difficult for us to win. You know, so we were -- we were trying to win it, and like I said, we had three opportunities that we missed, but they were -- they were good shots, and you know, sometimes they go in. It's not because we don't work at it. You know, it's just the way it goes. Some jumpshots don't go in. Q. What do you think the postseason opportunities might be, NIT, anything else? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: I have no idea. I have no idea. Q. Would you guys accept a bid into -- COACH MARK SCHMIDT: NIT? Yeah, I would assume, yeah. We'd accept the NIT. The CIT and all that stuff, probably not, but if the NIT came, yeah. Q. I think Nelson had two last shots at the end,? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: He had the last one. Q. Are you comfortable with him taking the shot at the end? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Yeah, it's two seconds left on the shot clock, on the game clock. If that goes in, we win. You know, he's hit shots in his career, and you know, it's hard. He came off the bench. He didn't play for two hours, and for him to come up and try to make that shot, it's hard. And I know he's disappointed, but at the end of the game, you can't really choose, you know, who is going to take that last shot. Q. First of all, congratulations, even though you lost, after going through the season that you went through, toughing it out with some tough wins, one shot away from winning the A-10 Championship, what did you learn from this team? COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Life lessons. You know, when you're down, you can either, you know, stay down or get up and fight, and our guys got up and fought. We had tough-minded kids that didn't listen to the noise, and just went about their business. You know, they earned the right to be successful. They didn't quit. They worked at it. Could have been easily -- you know, everybody talked about what we lost last year and then we get off to a bad start. It would have been easy for them just to throw in the towel, but they didn't do that. You know, they will be better for it. Q. Is this something, what happened today, sort of what comes from relying on freshmen? You had three guys, young guys, who played so well this year, but in a big stage. COACH MARK SCHMIDT: Like I said, you know, Saint Louis is a heck of a team. They won 23 games and we had the shot to win the game. You know, if someone -- when I woke up this morning and someone called me and said, you're going to have a shot to win the Atlantic 10 Championship, you going to take it? And I said absolutely, so we're right there. No matter freshmen, sophomores, whatever, we had an opportunity to win, and we missed the shot, but at the same time, like I said, give Saint Louis credit. They fought and they played good defense and they deserved the win. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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