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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 17, 2019Travis FordJordan GoodwinTramaine IsabellWashington, D.C. Saint Louis 55, St. Bonaventure 53. COACH TRAVIS FORD: First off, just we have a lot of respect for St. Bonaventure and Mark Schmidt, and what a great, great job he's done this season with his team, and what a championship game. What a competitive game. You just saw some guys, both teams, really, really competing, very much competing. You know, we've -- in the tournament, we came back in the first game. The other two games, we were right there. We haven't really dug our defense too big a hole or been down -- I guess we didn't get the lead until late or the middle of the second half. So I was proud of our guys. You know, I knew, I thought we made a few adjustments and talked about a few things at halftime. I was just hoping with he had enough in our tank. I'm thinking, we've played three games, they have only played two and we're the team that's going to have to make this comeback. We're going to have to dig, dig deep, and these guys were amazing. They dug deep. They found something and just said, we're going to refuse to give into this. We kept talking about rebounding. Now, I really thought if we just changed the rebounding, things would go our way. Rebounding is an indicator for our team, it's an indicator, and it was not going the right direction for probably about 25 minutes. It wasn't in the right direction for us for how we need it, and then it switched. And I thought we went on a run that changed the game, and I thought we went from being the team on its heels to the team that was being the aggressor, and just really proud of how these guys finished the game. They just finished really, really strong, and to me, that's pretty impressive on these guys's parts for being their fourth game in four days. That's not easy to do. Q. To what do you attribute your slow start to? Is it more than rebounding? Was there anything else? And what did the coach say to you during halftime to help make the adjustments? TRAMAINE ISABELL: I think sometimes in a championship game like this, I think there's jitters. We messed up on -- well, I messed up on a couple things that I wouldn't necessarily mess up on. Like underneath, out-of-bounds, I think it was their first basket, I think they were struggling to score and they got an easy three in the corner. When you have give teams momentum like that in a championship game, things can go either way, and I think that's what happened to them. We started getting on a run, the tide starts to shift and changes the game where everyone is so riled up, you never know what can happen; so you kind of want to see even keel and do what you do, you know, every day, which is not give up easy buckets. And if you start the game like that, then you're going to play offense, like, you know, pressing the pedal too much, doing too much. I think like Coach said, we just did the right things and ended up bringing the game out. Q. Take me through that final play. TRAMAINE ISABELL: Final play, yeah. Only thing that was going through my mind was Houston. JORDAN GOODWIN: Yeah. TRAMAINE ISABELL: We were up at Houston, and Corey Davis hits a huge three, and we were just all, just running around trying to make sure we didn't allow, you know that, to happen again. I think the basketball gods were with us. They got about three open looks. Yeah, I mean, you don't really want to live like that, but I mean, sometimes it's basketball. I'm just happy all of them rimmed out. Q. I asked Jordan this on the court, this has been a season where you were supposed to win the conference, had some rough go of it and turned it on at the end. Have you got where you felt like you were supposed to be, despite the rough ride and how did you get through the rough ride? TRAMAINE ISABELL: I do believe we are supposed to be here. I think we are a very good team. I've been a part of three teams, and we have tremendous athletes. We have tremendous competitors from top to bottom, from coaches, you know, down to the managers. Everyone wants to win, no matter how much we're down. We're down 15 in a championship game, some guys might quit, you know what I mean. I'm just happy to be here. I think we could have given it in. I don't remember how many games we lost straight in the conference, but you know, guys could have quit. I mean, some locker rooms might. But Coach just told us to keep pushing; we could do something special. I don't think we're done yet. I think we've still got a lot to prove. Q. For both players, was there a point at all in this game where maybe having played four games in four days was starting to catch up with you and that was entering your mind at all? JORDAN GOODWIN: I don't think so. I think for me personally, when I was out there on the court, I mean, the adrenaline running, it's a championship game. Everything like Coach Ford say, every possession counts, especially today. I don't think -- nobody was fatigued because the adrenaline just kept you up and not want to let your teammates down. So if you was tired, you couldn't be tired. Because that one play, that one mistake, will cost you the game. Q. You guys play loosely in the first half, making a lot of mistakes. Second half, you guys was more calm, had swagger. At what in the game were you guys, like, we got this, we going to win this game, because all of a sudden you guarded the perimeter, got them off the baseline, shrink the paint. What was going through your guys's mind? JORDAN GOODWIN: I think when Dion hit that three in the right corner, I was like, here we go, I was like, here we go. And then I think I got the steal, got fouled, came back, we let 45 slip, Tramaine passed me, I made one more, Dion hit it again, another three. So then right there, I was like, okay, everybody's locked in. I looked in my teammates eyes and I seen it. I seen Has, he was blocking everything, challenging all shots and we rebounded. I knew when Dion hit that three in the corner, we was good. TRAMAINE ISABELL: For me, I think the possession was I think -- I don't remember what it was, but we made -- there was like a media timeout or something, and we made a simple adjustment which we talked about before the game, which was if not force the ball, move. J.B. or whoever was guarding Stockard forced it back to the baseline sideline side, and ever since that little adjustment, it was hard for them to get into their rhythm and they started shooting shots at the end of the shot clock. And I felt we were six, seven -- COACH TRAVIS FORD: All it took is 30 minutes to grasp that concept (laughter). Only had about an hour shoot around or walk-through this morning. TRAMAINE ISABELL: Yeah, that media time-out and after that, I just felt more connected with everybody on the court. I mean, look at us. Coach knows what he's talking about. COACH TRAVIS FORD: Every once in a while. Q. Can you just elaborate and talk about the experience playing in this tournament in Brooklyn? JORDAN GOODWIN: This experience is, like, I can't even compare it to any other thing I've been a part of. I think for me, having extra years under my belt and winning this, this year, is going to make me and my team like way better next year, because I know, and I learned a lot from Tramaine, still learning. Just watching him handle all type of ball screens and just being a playmaker. When we've got guys like Javon Bess that lead with his work ethic and everything, he just make everything better and easy for us, and we got a lot of good freshmens this year. We got a good class next year. So this experience is just going to help this program go up. Q. You know, of course, we go back to the days when you were playing at Drexel University and you come here to the Atlantic 10 and you win the Most Outstanding Player. Take me through, I guess, from the Drexel to now being here at Saint Louis. TRAMAINE ISABELL: I mean, a lot's transpired. The decision to leave Drexel was hard in itself. The coaches there have done a lot for me. Coach Fortier has known me since I was a kid. He coached at University of Washington. Coach Packer (ph), great coach, the entire staff, love them to death. But Coach Ford told me I would be a part of something special, you know what I mean, and I believed him. I mean, just sitting here as the A-10 champion, I wouldn't change anything. I think here, I'm not asked to do as much. Like I said, I've got a guy sitting next to me that will go 16 points and four rebounds with six offensive rebounds, that's six -- what are you, three? COACH TRAVIS FORD: And what's amazing about it is every team is trying to not let him rebound. That's what's amazing. Their whole game plan is don't let him rebound. I mean, that's what's amazing about it; that he still does it and that's what they are trying to stop. It's amazing. TRAMAINE ISABELL: But I'm happy to be here. Coach Ford, speaks for itself, the basketball resumé, his, you know -- he's what you want, as a point guard, who inspires, who wants to be like a professional basketball player one day. So just being in practice with him and seeing how much he dedicates himself to the game, whether it's on the court or, you know, watching film, things like that, has definitely been a learning experience. Q. What did you do defensively to slow them down the second half, the matchup with them? COACH TRAVIS FORD: Well, in the first half we were changing defenses a lot, and it wasn't working, and it's been working the last couple Dayton games, it was working. As you saw, the 1-3-1 has been -- was dominant last night. They picked it apart first two possessions and I got out of it. You know, we tried a couple -- you know, I came into the tournament, and this is not something we've done, at all, until we got here. We came into the tournament wanting to change defenses and figuring out which ones are would being and then go with that the rest of the game for a couple reasons. To try to conserve energy, if we're going to win four games, we had to figure out five to six minutes in the game where can we conserve a little bit of energy, and then try to keep teams off-balance a little bit. And tonight, we started out changing defenses and none of them were working, except for our man-to-man, and so we just stuck with that. And at halftime, we made a few adjustments, we reiterated, don't give up the middle and how we're going to guard ball screens. How we wanted to guard them, I thought would work. We just weren't doing it and we just kind of, in a forceful way, at halftime, this is the way it needs to be done. If you'll do it, it will work. And these guys, they have a competitive nature about them that's fun to watch and fun to coach. I've said it all year long, we're not the prettiest team. We're not going to go out there beat you with a best of your memory of shots, you know, but there's something that clicks about them at some point in the game -- and made a good point. At some point in the game, we gain ultra-confidence and it takes off. Now, we're playing good, but there's something about every game that we have success in that something happens, and we just take off. Last night's game, we did it for 40 minutes. I hadn't seen that from us in a while, for 40 minutes. Tonight, we had a teammate who did not get in the game last night, who is a senior and won -- they all get along great, but Dion, everybody loves Dion in our locker room. Just a very mature -- he's like the father figure probably in the locker room and everybody loves him, and I thought last night's game was a little bit of a tough matchup the way Davidson cuts and all that. Dion is the first guy in breakfast this morning. He walks in first before everybody else. Didn't play a minute last night. Comes over, small space, pats me on the back, shakes my hand. "Coach, let's get this one today." I thought, he's ready. So I went with him early in the second half because of his experience, and he made a couple big shots, and I think our guys fed off it, not just because that, but because he made them. And I think it might have been the eight-minute time-out. We made a run back -- I do know this. We can cut it to four after being down quite a bit and I always make an effort to kind of watch the other team during a time-out, how they go to their huddle. I sat our guys down and said, "Guys, we've got it. We need to step on it now." They were hot. One thing I told them early in the game, is this is the best thing that could happen to us, them jumping out on us. I'm trying to keep our guys confident and ready to go. "But this is great. I've seen this a hundred times guys, this fine and let's them get this out of their system. They are playing unbelievable. They are jacked up. They are excited. They are a good basketball team, but our time will come. Our time will come if you just hang in there." But at the eight-minute mark, I think it was, I told them, all right, now let's put the pedal to the metal. Let's let loose a little bit and let's get a little more aggressive on defense. Let's try to get a steal somewhere. And Jordan made a big steal. I can go on and on, on why -- first half, they got every 50/50 ball. I was so upset with our guys about not putting our head in. Second half, guys were overdoing it. They were literally reaching and scrapping for every single play, but how we won the game is who we are. You know, we are just a hard-playing physical aggressive basketball team, and sometimes I play six and sometimes I might play seven. Q. I would have loved to have been in that locker room for that halftime speech. Second half, you were saying earlier, that you guys was guarding the perimeter, stuck to the hips, you know -- COACH TRAVIS FORD: You were in that locker room it sound like. Q. How did your mentality -- because anybody can draw up X's and O's, but the mentality of your guys emulates on the court, how did you translate it to them? COACH TRAVIS FORD: One adjustment. I thought Stockard was getting loose a little bit, even from the top of the key off ball screens. So we switched. We started switching a little bit in the second half. We started switching some ball screens with certain guys. I was taking a little bit of chance, because I was like, you three are going to switch, you who are not going to switch, what we call tracking it, you're going to track -- we had everybody doing something differently. But the common denominator was give them zero space. They need to feel -- they need to smell your breath. When they go on a ball screen, they come off a stagger, they come along the baseline, if your man is along the baseline, he's coming out there somewhere. He's not down there hanging out. Any time your man cuts to the baseline or is coming through, he is coming out somewhere. He could come back, he could come back the other side, but there needs to be no space. It's the only way. We've got to gain physicality. We have to gain aggressiveness somehow, because they had it. And the defense, we always gain our confidence on defense. It's not going to happen on offense. We don't even worry about that. We don't even think about that. We think about defense so much because we know -- and rebounding, that that dictates everything else that we're going to do. If we happen to make a few shots, uh-oh, because that even gives us that much more energy and confidence to play defense. And there was a stretch, that stretch that I mentioned, I told our guys, "Guys, every shot they are taking is coming up short. Every single shot they are taking is coming up short. You've got to put -- you've got to put the pedal down, right now. Right now you're going to have to make your run, right now." And I thought if we could get a little decent lead at about the two- or three-minute mark, with the way we shoot free throws, you never know, but we were able to finish it out, and it was close there at the end. We gave up shots there that we obviously are not supposed to be giving up, but worked out for us. Q. You mentioned yesterday about how you are a team that didn't get a whole lot of sleep, you were up to 3:00, 4:00 in the morning; the coaches and players didn't get to bed until 1:30 or 2:00. I just have to ask this or I wouldn't be doing my job. How in God's name did you pull this thing off, with the lack of sleep you've had and the lack of time to prepare, I guess. COACH TRAVIS FORD: Yeah, I think our team's been through a lot of adversity this year. You look at injuries, different things. I didn't -- I never did really buy into that, you know, all that stuff. We only had like three or four players even returning off last year's team. Because this all goes to answer your question: We've been through a lot of adversity that toughens you up a little bit. And when you're picked first and you don't really go through the league quite the way you wanted to, even through all that; we let some games go that maybe we thought we shouldn't have. So you come to a tournament with something to prove, something to prove. You know, something to prove. When you're out to prove something and you get a little taste of it, and when I mean a little taste, you beat Richmond. Then you beat Dayton. Now you feel like, wait a second, here. Now you want more of it. And when you're focused in on the game plan, I only mentioned it after the game last night very briefly about the NCAA Tournament, about what an incredible event it is, and then I was done talking. Then we had to focus on the game. Don't focus on the outcome. Focus on what you need to do to get the outcome. So I didn't talk about -- beyond that point, I never talked about what this game meant, other than what do we need to do to beat St. Bonaventure. You don't worry about being fatigued when you're laser-focused and you're focused on doing your job. You don't -- you don't have time to think about that and I don't think these guys had time to think. I think they had more to prove than -- and what we didn't want is if we weren't successful, that we look back and say, oh, we were tired. That wouldn't have been an excuse. But when you're focused on something, you don't let outside things distract you. We've had enough things like that that have toughened us up I think a little bit. And as I told our guys, our team is made up of a lot of different guys coming from a lot of different areas. We all came here, you know, and three years ago, we were picked dead last in this league, dead last, over a program that was struggling. Picked dead last three years ago. I told these guys, they put a lot of work in it, they put a lot of time in it, and my pregame talk tonight was totally about how much we've worked every single day competing against each other in practice. You competed with each other in practice for opportunities like this. I don't think we gave ourselves time to think about it. We prepare so much. We over-prepare; that I don't give our guys time to think about anything else. We have a lot of guys from New York, now. We've got a lot going on, and trying to keep these guys focused, thinking about the game plan and thinking about what we need to do to win the game and nothing else. Q. I know coaches really don't like to put any focus on themselves in this situation, but you're coming into this job three years ago, nobody likes to get fired. Do you have any sort of satisfaction of coming into a new program, getting another chance, and bringing it back to the NCAAs? COACH TRAVIS FORD: Well, I'm excited for our university. I appreciate we've got our president, Fred Pestello, and our athletic director, Chris May, here. These guys have been very committed to this basketball program and committed to helping us be our best. Helping us be our best. And you know, I said this as soon as we won, I'm so happy for the University and for the City of Saint Louis. Guys, I've been doing this for 22 years. I've been a college head coach for 22 years. I'm happy for these kids. I love staying up till 2:00 last night. I love it. Absolutely love it. I lose myself into it and I don't -- my wife says I take losing too hard and don't enjoy winning enough, but I enjoy the process that goes through to building a program. Every job, this is my fifth or sixth college job, every single one I've taken over they are a challenge, every one, they are wanting to do something better. I enjoy that process. When I have people that I work with every day in the administration like I have that makes my job enjoyable, I've said that a lot since I've been at Saint Louis University, I enjoy working with the people I work with every day. I enjoy the environment. I've been -- I've coached at Campbellsville University, and every step of the way, I've been in this league before, and I'm excited for the university. I'm excited for the city, but more, I'm excited for these young men who all came. Like I said, Tramaine Isabell was getting recruited by everybody in America. I told him, you're going to play on a good team. I'm going to be very, very hard on you, very hard on you. If you don't want to be coached hard, don't come here. And boy, he and I have battled, a lot of times this year. And I told him after the game, he's made me a better coach, a lot of these guys have. They have made me a better coach. Hopefully we've helped them some, as well, but they have all come from different areas, and I want success for them. A lot of them came because we believed in what we were doing. We believed -- you bring them to campus -- we have one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. I think one of the probably hidden gems in the country. If you've never been to our campus, beautiful campus. Great facilities. Incredible support. I think we average 7,000, 8,000 people a game, average. Great support. So all these guys, they like that, but they want to believe that they can win. They want to believe that they can get better and they want a chance for after college. And senior night, I said it after the senior night, we had senior night after the game and I was addressing the crowd in front of seniors. I said, I promised all these seniors, my job is to prepare them to leave Saint Louis University, that's my job and along the way, to win a few games. But my job is to prepare these young men to leave. Better men to be husbands and fathers. Get them better at basketball and prepare them when this thing is over with, what are you going to do, and that's our job. It's fun when you're winning games along the way. This is just like, this is, you know, a bonus. This is great. But we take that very, very seriously. Very seriously. And these guys, I'm hard on them, very hard but they respond. Jordan Goodwin and I kind of got into it last night; that gets us both going. He knows I love him and I know where he's coming from. He got a technical; hey, don't get it. He wanted to say his two cents. I let him say it, I don't care. Get it out of your system and let's move on. But we have that bond. You can't coach guys like I coach. You can't coach like I coach if you don't have a relationship with players, you don't have a relationship with them, you can't do it. These guys know I love them. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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