PAC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 13, 2021

Evan Battey

Colorado Buffaloes

Postgame Press Conference

Oregon State - 70, Colorado 68.

Q. I know you're a senior leader on this team and obviously you guys are disappointed and this is something that you guys really wanted, but with the NCAA tournament just around the corner, what's maybe your message to the guys as you guys wait to hear what seed you'll be tomorrow?

EVAN BATTEY: Nothing we can do about it now. Obviously we weren't good enough tonight, so we just have to focus on winning the next game and I'm going to be reiterating that to my team, just win the next game, and if you don't want to go home, then win the next game. That's it.

Q. During the regular season matchups against these guys you guys did a fantastic job defending the three-point line, held them to around 27 percent combined in the two games. Obviously a different story tonight. I know you're not a perimeter defender, but what was happening on that end of the floor that they were able to get going from the arc tonight?

EVAN BATTEY: Yeah, I don't know. I'm not out there, so, I'm not out there much. I don't know. We got to get the shooters, we got to see the man and ball, all those things that we talk about in practice every day, we got to do that, but we didn't, so this is the result.

Q. You guys are the best free throw shooting team in the country. You missed eight from the line. Do you see that as where you guys lost tonight or from your perspective did you see something else? Tad talked about guarding and rebounding. What did you see?

EVAN BATTEY: There's a lot of reasons we lost tonight. Free throw box out, that's a huge one. It leads to a bang three, so goes from four to seven. Free throws will definitely help, but you can't put it all down to one stat. It's the combined, it's the combination of things that contributes to losses.

Q. How hard is it to just put this one in the rearview mirror or are you guys like immediately like focusing on the immediate future or is it tough to kind of put this one in the rearview mirror?

EVAN BATTEY: Yeah, it's going to be tough. I mean, different people deal with things differently, so I mean, personally, I'm probably not going to get over this for awhile. For the team, I have no idea. We'll see in practice.

Q. Tad mentioned maybe he thought you guys wanted this a little bit too much, that you weren't playing kind of free and easy, maybe we saw that with the early turnovers, the missed free throws. Do you feel like that was the case at all, Maybe you guys didn't play maybe as loose and free as you did against USC yesterday?

EVAN BATTEY: I can't speak for everybody on my team. I was getting a little emotional during the game. I didn't want to lose. Before the game I was calling my mom, all that. I couldn't sit still. So I don't know. I don't know what my guys felt, but I felt like -- I felt like anxious, I felt like excited, and if I showed that, I don't know. But collectively probably we were playing a little uptight and we just failed on some of those turnovers and bad shots, so yeah.