NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - SYRACUSE VS WEST VIRGINIA

March 21, 2021

Bob Huggins

Bankers Life Fieldhouse

West Virginia Mountaineers

Postgame Media Conference

Syracuse - 75, West Virginia - 72

THE MODERATOR: We have Coach Bob Huggins.

Q. It's kind of a different alignment and lineups that you had to put out there today. Did that contribute to some of the turnovers, some of the passing issues that you had?

BOB HUGGINS: No, I don't think so. They did a good job getting in the passing lanes. I don't think the lineups had anything to do with it. Actually, we downsized. So it should have been better.

Q. Coach, obviously, on both sides, this became sort of a three-point shooting contest. Just trying to defend against that style of play, that flow of the game, can you just talk about the back-and-forths of it, the difficulties of trying to defend the style of play like that?

BOB HUGGINS: I thought we kind of did a pretty good job getting back in the game, and then I think we took a two-point lead, and then we kept switching when we shouldn't have switched. We needed to keep the same guy, the same defender on their best player. And we kept switching and kept saying stop switching, and we still kept switching, which is -- I think we switched it a little bit, took a look at switching a little bit in practice yesterday, but we shouldn't have switched it.

Q. Coach, you've talked about it all season, but just what Gabe does on both sides of the floor, I mean, is it hard for us to -- you know, not knowing the game plan and not knowing the ins and outs -- to really appreciate everything that he does.

BOB HUGGINS: I think it's hard for most people to appreciate everything he does. He keeps balls alive for us. He stops penetration. We've had a hard time all year, as I'm sure you're aware of, staying in front of our man, and Gabe really does a great job of stopping penetration. He's the key to our defense. He's the last resort. He does a lot of things. We're not near as good a basketball team without him.

Q. Coach, it was a nail-biting second half. However, your team only had one blocked shot throughout the game. Do you think this was the key factor towards the loss?

BOB HUGGINS: No. No. We're not going to block jump shots from 15 feet and out. They shot the ball really well. Buddy shot the ball extremely well. He had a stretch where I think he made three consecutive threes. That really when we were ahead, and we tried to catch up from then on.

They stopped taking it to the basket. The shot blocking didn't have anything to do with it today. It has before, but not today.

Q. Hey, Bob, Derek recovered within the second half of that last game after, you said, his anxious start. Did you see similar things today, or was there another excuse for what held him back or maybe what Syracuse did to him to hold him back?

BOB HUGGINS: We were struggling to guard, and they gave us their best inside defender. They were double-teaming Derek. We just didn't -- our timing of getting the ball inside to him wasn't very good, and so Gabe does a much better job defensively, and Gabe rebounds it pretty much as well as Derek has. So if you go by minutes played anyway.

We're trying to win, man. Just trying to win.

Q. Bob, what do you most attribute the slow start today to? Was it kind of adjusting to that zone? Why do you think the first 10 or 12 minutes of the game went as poorly as they did?

BOB HUGGINS: I think we ran what we needed to run. We just didn't score it. How many shots inside of three, four feet did we miss to start the game? They had a lot to do with that, but I mean, you catch it and going at the basket from three or four feet, we've got to make one. We didn't make any.

And then they shot it extremely well. They shot it -- it seemed like everything they shot up went in, and they shot it from deep, and we just wanted to make them bounce it, and we didn't. We let them get too many step-in shots.

Q. With all the adversity you guys have dealt with this year with COVID and then departures, what will you remember the most about this group of guys?

BOB HUGGINS: Well, they're good people. That's what I just told them in the locker room. They're as good a people as I've had the privilege of being around in all of my years of coaching. They're really good guys. They're good guys. They care about each other. They really are a team. I think I'll remember just how good a people they were and will continue to be, I'm sure.

Q. Coach, Syracuse center Dolezaj, I think he played maybe the last 12 minutes with the four fouls. Strange, though, that -- I guess maybe with Gabe, kind of trade defense for offense there, but the fact that he couldn't get challenged for that fifth foul frustrating at all?

BOB HUGGINS: Well, quite frankly, we couldn't score it in there. They did a good job of gang guarding us when we threw it into whichever guy we threw it into, be it Gabe or be it Derek. They gang guarded him, and we didn't do a very good job of playing inside out with it. We made bad decisions with the ball with that part of it.

I don't -- that's not -- that wasn't really our issue, I don't think, Justin. I think our issue was we stopped guarding for a short period of time. They made three threes, I believe it was, and all of a sudden, it goes from a tie game to them up nine.

Q. Coach, for as long as you've known Coach Boeheim, does it surprise you at all that he's able to take a team that was a bubble team and make a run to the Sweet 16?

BOB HUGGINS: No. No, and he's got good players. He's got good players. He had good players. It's just it took some time for -- I think, for them to gel together. I think it took some time to understand what he was asking them to do. You don't just roll out of bed and play two-three zone the way they do. He's the best that's ever coached the two-three zone, and they're the best to ever play it. Syracuse is the best to ever play the two-three zone.

So, I mean, it -- you know, everybody wants it to happen like right now. It doesn't work like that. And he did a terrific job.

Q. Coach, you've mentioned in the past about taking so much energy to rally, dig yourself out of holes. Is that a factor again today with the defensive layups you mentioned and down the stretch?

BOB HUGGINS: No, I don't think so. That's not the way I saw it. We switched, and we shouldn't have switched. I mean, plain and simple. We wanted size on Buddy, and we switched size off of him, and he shot it over the top of us and made three threes. Then I think it went from a tie score to us being down nine. He couldn't do that when we had length on him. We bothered him when we had length on him.

I don't know -- I don't know why they switched, but they kept switching. We switched three times when we shouldn't have switched.