BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 11, 2021

Dave Leitao

DePaul Blue Demons

Madison Square Garden

Postgame Media Conference

UConn - 94, DePaul - 60

COACH LEITAO: Quite obviously, when you end the season and end it on a loss, regardless if it was a night like tonight or a one-point loss, it's disappointing. I don't think we came close to playing our best game. I was concerned at the first TV timeout because the energy was different than it was last night. And what happened after that is we didn't -- we lost some of our fight.

That being said, Connecticut had a lot to do with it. As we close the season, I think it's really important for me to continue to understand, last year when the season ended abruptly in this building and one year later what has transpired for our kids and not just our kids but kids playing basketball or football or lacrosse or soccer or any sport across the country -- and if anybody knows me, I'm really, really big into and concerned about emotional wellness and the things that they've been through.

This team in particular has been nothing short of extremely challenging to ask. I got the good fortune, I've got a lovely family and I can see them nightly. But most, if not all, of these kids haven't seen their mom, dad, sister, brother, since July.

And so it puts every coaching staff -- and I've talked to a lot of coaches who share the same sentiments, when you're coaching you push a lot of buttons. And there are times where you have to empathize what these guys are going through or have been through, to be asked to do the things that they've been asked to do in an unprecedented situation, from not seeing friendly faces or a home-cooked meal to isolation to all the things that go into the season.

And the other half of it as staff coaching staff you have to challenge them to do right and do better both on and off the court. There's an every-day and every-week balance about what you go through, to empathize or to challenge. And that's a really difficult thing to balance, especially when there's not a playbook on what we've been through.

As we close the season that has been amongst all the other things. And because we're in the entertainment business, I don't know when you turn on the television or you follow a team or your favorite team that you really could understand what these guys have been through. And in any sport, basketball in particular, you just have to be off by this much in order to make a difference, whether it's defensive rotation or free throw, if you're off by that much.

And so hopefully we'll be past this time that we're in sooner rather than later so that we can have some accumulated normalcy, which is what everybody needs.

As far as our opponent, I go back and thinking about Danny and what he's done in a short period of time at Connecticut which is to follow both Kevin Ollie, who did a wonderful job in the national championship, and Coach Calhoun, who had three national championships is not an easy deal. But he was raised in White Eagle Hall, for those who don't know or never been, White Eagle Hall is a small, undersized gym that his father coached the greatest high school team, along with DeMatha, in the history of high school basketball.

So he learned basketball at an early age and how it's supposed to be played. This team that he has here epitomizes that. They've got a tremendous back court, and an outpitch in Bouknight. And didn't have to have a great game but everybody on the team played well. But if you watch them on film and you study them, rarely do they make mistake defensively. They're tough. They're physical enough. They beat us up on the backboard, which is the essence of how the game is supposed to be played, but most importantly how he learned the game. In the era of 3-point shooting sometimes it gets lost you've got to make those shots, you've got to shoot from the perimeter; I know that from today's basketball.

But there are certain things that are necessary to win. And Danny has brought that to that program and carrying on with the tradition that has made that program, particularly at Madison Square Garden, one of the best in Big East history.

My message to him was if you're going to come to New York and you're not gonna bring the fans from Fairfield County or West Hartford to drink a lot and have a good time and cheer you on, then you better win this thing in the tradition of UConn basketball.

And what he's learned about that and about how he's grown through this business, that a byproduct of that is to win. And so that was my message to him. So good luck to them the rest of the way. And for us we'll kind of get back home and exhale a little bit and bring this challenging journey to season's end.

Q. You saw this team in December and January. How much different are they now?

COACH LEITAO: I'm sorry you said something about --

Q. You saw Connecticut in December and January. Are they much different now?

COACH LEITAO: Connecticut you're talking about? Just the season. I think the two things that are really important. They've been through a lot of pauses and their own challenges and they've been resilient enough emotionally to still be here. I can probably tell you just like every other team, Danny has his concerns about a different guy, different day, if he's locked in emotionally or not.

But what they've done the last four games of the season and tonight was a byproduct of getting past what challenges they face when they were on pause and they weren't -- I remember the home game to Creighton which they lost. And it was a down-to-the-wire game. I think they were a totally different team because, one, emotionally they've gotten past all those things that can be distractions to a lot of other people.

Secondly is that like everybody else, they have a definition to them. Defensively, I don't know that anybody that I've seen, particularly that we've played against, that plays better ball-screen defense than them, that can close out to shooters and then attack both backboards the way they do.

And then offensively, as I said, most of them -- and this is a really hard thing to do, are involved in what they do offensively and don't take a back seat. And it's really hard sometimes emotionally when you play with a superstar or a budding superstar like Bouknight and not want your turn. But it works well and I think what's happened from early in the season to now both physically and emotionally speaks to that.

Q. You probably agree with me. I think this game was lost on the boards. You faced them twice. Did you prepare your team to match their tenacity on the boards? Can you tell me what went wrong with that?

COACH LEITAO: Well, you know, two nights in a row. That's been Providence's part of the definition of who they are is their ability to rebound. And we beat them by double figures. And talking about it in a quick turnaround, because this morning or this afternoon when we were talking about the game and scouting report and all that, the one thing that we said first was rebounding and how to carry it over from last night to tonight.

But you can't go through box-out drills. You can't go through physicality. You just have to make sure that they understand how important it is. And to their credit, they beat us up pretty bad on the backboards because they went after it. And I don't know that we matched it with any level of physicality in terms of box-outs and pursuing the basketball. So it, quite honestly, got a little out of hand in terms of their ability to play ping-pong on the backboards and our lack of resiliency that way.

Q. Moving forward, what do you think the future looks like for the program after tonight's game?

COACH LEITAO: The future? I mean, the future for me is tomorrow. I think getting back home and the first thing is to rest. These guys, as I mentioned, have been through more than anybody could ever imagine. They need an opportunity to exhale.

We've got to complete our finals. We're getting ready for final exams or in final exams for some. And then, like every other team has to go through, is figuring themselves out. And this is such a strange year because we've got to address -- normally you say goodbye to your seniors and you've got to address that situation. And then you've got to be able to start work after that rest period on what we didn't have last year, which is a spring and a summer to kind of figure out how best to improve.

Q. You spoke about how difficult the circumstances of this season were. And I don't think anyone in the country had it as tough as you guys not being able to start the season until two days before Christmas. So my question to you is how much credit do you give to your guys for navigating such a difficult season physically, emotionally, as you look back on everything now as your season has come to a close?

COACH LEITAO: Are you talk about our teams or teams in general?

Q. About your team and the struggles you had to go through like not starting until four weeks out.

COACH LEITAO: Based on that, again, if anybody knows me I'm not an excuse guy. But never having the ability to get your legs under you and get a rhythm from that. I said to a couple people, and I didn't really focus on it until I was looking at it this week, that we did not have one practice. We have 13 guys on scholarship. One is redshirting because of an ACL injury. So we have 12.

We did not have one practice out of the approximately 80 practices where all 12 guys were on the floor at the same time. So all the things that you need other than the obvious, which is talent, or skill, or all those things, which hopefully you have enough of, there's those other things which provide you opportunities to grow, chemistry, resiliency, knowing each other inside and out, the things that you do as a team that we couldn't do either, and having guys over at my house as a team or going out, going bowling or things that come naturally that create a bond and a chemistry, particularly with us because we had so many new people, was challenging.

But if you know me, or anybody knows me, that to me is an excuse and so you still have to fight.

This is a difficult time we're living in, and some people will deal with it better than others. So when given the choice I'm going to try as best I can to teach everybody how to deal with it and come out ahead.

But definitely not just for us. If you look around the country, I watched Notre Dame and they haven't had the kind of year that they're typical of. They hit a game-winning shot first round, they lose like 40 or 50. The next night that's not Notre Dame as you would normally know it to be. So there are a number of programs that weren't defined this year by who they normally are, win, lose or draw. And I think that's been a challenge again for each and every one of the guys across the country who have had to endure a season like this.