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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2020Jim ChristianSteffon MitchellJay HeathGreensboro, North Carolina Notre Dame - 80, Boston College - 58 THE MODERATOR: Questions for the players first, please. Q. Just give me a sense for what today is like when you hear all the stuff that surrounded this game about the idea of fans not being allowed to attend and on top of that, just this entire week and what the coronavirus has been. STEFFON MITCHELL: Yeah, I think that played a factor, but I don't think it played too much of a factor. We knew what was going on and we got emails from our school and stuff like that, but I don't think that affected us today. JAY HEATH: I feel like we just tried to stay focused on winning. We didn't really let the outside noise bother us. But we knew it was going on. We really can't do nothing about it. Q. John Mooney, first team all-ACC type of guy. When you're trying to impact his game, what are some of the difficulties of trying to defend him? JIM CHRISTIAN: You know, he's such a hard guy to go at because he scores -- he can hit threes, he can score in the post, and he's such a good passer. You know, the goal is probably not to let the other guys beat you, because he's hard to guard, he's going to get his. We did a poor job of that tonight, the first two games we did a great job of trying not to let the other guys beat us with open threes, driving angles, and kind of make him try to beat you from the two. Just play without fouling him. He's such a hard guard. Keep him off the glass, but it's really the other guys, the things he does for the other guys to open it up for them is what makes their team good. Q. Coach, is there any difficulty in trying to recruit at Boston College to keep up with say the talent level of a Duke and a Carolina and trying to compete for that top spot in the ACC? JIM CHRISTIAN: I think there's a lot of people that have trouble keeping up with the talent level of Duke and Carolina. Every school has its challenges, we obviously have ours, and I think what we've done is we've tried to address them, and for the first, maybe the last year and a half, I think our administration is really trying to move our program forward. We probably hadn't done that for a while, and I think it's great to have those conversations, just long-term for Boston College. I think that there's some things I think that we've recognized that we need to do. And Boston is a tougher area than most to do it in because of all the things that go with it in terms of building costs and room on campus. We don't have the biggest campus. So I think we've done a good job of really addressing those things, and hopefully those things will continue to improve. Q. I know your AD is a North Carolina guy. Give me a sense for your thoughts on Greensboro as an ACC Tournament site. JIM CHRISTIAN: You know, I played the first one here my first year, and I thought it was tremendous. We were in the 12-13 game and it was 13,000 people here. Actually the bus pulled up and people were tailgating and I was wondering where they were going, because it was us and Georgia Tech. Neither one of us travel well. So I think it's -- you could tell how far the city of Greensboro extends itself for this tournament, how much pride they take in it. Just the people working in the hotels, we went out to eat with our team, and the people couldn't have been nicer. It's a great venue. I think it's a great place. Q. How much did the early shooting problems impact the outcome and were you getting shots you wanted and just missing? JIM CHRISTIAN: Yeah, I think they impacted the whole game. Against Notre Dame you've got to get into a good offensive rhythm early. I think we missed like nine straight shots in the paint. So I think, yeah, that's about as good as you want. If you get an open three and you get the ball on top of the basket, I think we had some young guys playing in this tournament for the first time that maybe -- maybe a little too excited. We let them get into a huge rhythm when they stretched the lead to about 18 in the first half, and if you dig that big of a hole to them, it's hard to come back. Q. Coach, in the second half when Notre Dame started pulling away a little bit, it looked like Boston College, instead of looking for maybe the best shot, was looking for the first open three. I got that impression. JIM CHRISTIAN: I don't know, we were attacking the basket, cut it to seven, and then we had a couple guys go down. So the guys who were attacking the basket for us were hurt. If you put in a -- we went to four guards, so it's hard for us to run as much of our stuff because we had guys not playing the right positions, so we were kind of trying to spread them out a little bit and attack off the dribble, kicking for threes. We're trying to -- I don't think we were rushing, taking bad quick shots, we were maybe not just not scoring on the break. But we weren't able to run the stuff we were running because two guys got hurt during the game. It's hard to play like that when you're putting a guy in a new position he hasn't played all year. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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