NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - YALE VS PURDUE

March 18, 2022

James Jones

Gabbidon Jalen

Azar Swain

Fiserv Forum

Yale Bulldogs

Media Conference

Purdue - 78, Yale - 56

MODERATOR: If we could have an opening statement from Coach Jones, please, and then we'll take questions for the student-athletes.

COACH JAMES JONES: I would just like to start off by saying I'm extremely proud of my group. I thought we accomplished a lot. The guys played hard, they played well together, left it all out on the court. As a coach, it's all you really can ask for. My seniors were tremendous. They qualified for three NCAA tournaments. It's the first time in Yale history that's happened, so kudos to them and their efforts. These two young men actually had to sit out a year of school to come back and have this opportunity, and I'm grateful for them and I'm happy that they had the opportunity to showcase themselves and help our program continue in the right direction.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

Questions for the student-athletes, please.

Q. Jalen, can you describe -- I mean, Purdue's offense is so varied, they have so many different guys with different skill sets, and just what the challenge is in defending, trying to defend that?

JALEN GABBIDON: I mean, they have a 7' 4" guy in the middle who shoots 66 percent from the field and 20 minutes a game, averages 15 and 8. On top of that they have a probable top five pick guard who came out and was three for six on three when that's not really what he's known for. On top of that, he's one of the most athletic players in the country coming downhill. so When you combine those two things with the fact they also have the top five offense in the country, it's hard to stop.

I think we did a good job, but some of the things that we needed to go our way just didn't go our way, some of the calls that we wished came our way. They made 27 of 33 free throws and their big guys who usually shoot around 50 percent shot around 80 percent. So those things happen. It's kind of hard to win a team who's in the Big Ten championship game and lost the Big Ten championship game. I'm proud of our team for competing. We're an undersized team playing against one of the biggest teams in the country. I thought we played tough and it didn't go our way.

Q. Azar, just to follow up on that, what is it like to actually play against that much size?

AZAR SWAIN: I mean, it goes without saying. It's different than the Ivy League, obviously. It was something that we were going to try to prepare for. I thought we prepared in a way that gave us a chance to come out victorious. And kind of like Jalen said, there were just a few things, maybe a few mishaps that we missed early in the game and stuff like that during runs that just compounded. And in a game like that against a team that held the No. 1 spot in the country for a couple weeks at the beginning of the season, I mean, it's going to be hard to come out with a victory. So we needed to play a little better than we did. I mean, that's just how it goes, it was one of those days.

Q. Azar, you got off to a really nice start and then it slowed down a little bit. Did they do anything different on you during the course of the game to try to help slow you down?

AZAR SWAIN: Not that I felt. I felt like I had missed a lot of shots that I'm very more than capable of making and some of them weren't even contested or that contested. So I'll obviously look inwards when it comes to that because I feel like I can get any shot off on the court, takes just a matter of making it. And those are shots that I work on. I'm not really paying attention to what they're doing. I didn't sense any like extreme changes or anything like that. I felt like I just missed some shots in the second half.

Q. Azar, Jalen, you guys hung around in the first half and then were down about a dozen at halftime, came out and had two early baskets in the start of the second. What was sort of the halftime discussion like and what were your sort of plans coming out in the second half?

JALEN GABBIDON: I mean, we had to come out and make a run from the get-go. If we wanted to have a chance to win the game, we couldn't let them get comfortable again right off the bat. And so to come out and make a push off the first possession was our primary focus and then to just continue playing our game. If we continue to do what we do over the course of 40 minutes and we make shots and we run our actions well, we'll give ourselves a good chance regardless of the runs that they make. You know, we shot 4-17 from three and 23-63 from the field, and so some of those shots just have to go down. It got down to nine, they went on the run and we weren't able to weather it enough to keep it down.

COACH JAMES JONES: Questions for Coach Jones, please.

Q. Coach, I just want to ask -- kind of want you to talk about kind of the issues your team faced without being able to establish a post presence, kind of the idea that obviously we had six inches over the -- you know, the height that you guys had, and I want to talk about the lower percentage shots you guys had to take, kind of you were outscored in the paint. I mean, I don't know what I'm trying to get with that.

COACH JAMES JONES: I don't know either.

Q. Sorry. Do you feel that because of kind of the lack of height you had on your team that you had to take lower percentage shots outside the paint?

COACH JAMES JONES: You probably haven't seen us play most of the year, right? Probably your first game. So the shots we had today are similar to the shots that we normally take. Like Azar said, he had a lot of open shots that he thought that he could make.

The one thing that I wish we could have done a better job was getting the ball to Matt Knowling in the first half. He's normally the guy that scores at the basket. Our five guys don't really do that quite often, maybe if we get them off a roll. But they have drop coverage and have Edey in the middle of the paint, it's hard for anybody to score at the basket. I'm not certain that it forces taking a lot of shots that we don't normally take. I thought we had a lot of those and, you know, we missed some opportunities that I felt like should have gone down but did not.

Q. First, one kind of quick one. Putting Jarvis in the starting lineup, was that out of concern about the size of Purdue? Was there another rationale there?

COACH JAMES JONES: That's my dad right there and he didn't raise a fool. So we could have started Isaiah Kelly at 6' 6" and a half against 7' 4", but that doesn't seem to be too reasonable to me. So we tried to match up with size, yeah, of course. And E.J. is a kid that he's -- he plays starter's minutes anyway. He and Isaiah split time, so what we try to do is have E.J. play against Edey and have Isaiah play against Williams and it turned out that Williams played a lot less tonight.Secondly, can you explain from a coaching perspective how difficult it is to prepare for a team like Purdue with that 7'4" size inside and the speed of someone like Ivey, who just might be the fastest player in college basketball?

COACH JAMES JONES: Yeah, so I think I may have answered this before, like I was fine in terms of their personnel outside of Edey. He's just, there's nobody like him in the country, like have you seen anybody in your life as big as he is? Like other than Yao Ming, I've seen nobody as big as he is. He's the second largest man I've ever seen and he's really good.

So from that standpoint, it's hard to try to game plan for that because we don't have a 7' 4" guy on campus that we can roll around there and try to defend and go up against, so that obviously makes it difficult.

The biggest issue for us was putting him on the foul line and him making free throws. Again, if he shot normally what he normally shoots, like he took more free throws -- he took one less free throw than our entire team, so that was a huge difference in the game as far as I see it.

Q. Coach, just curious to hear about that sort of final two minutes when you subbed Jalen and Azar out back to back. Just wondering what you told them and what that moment was like.

COACH JAMES JONES: Yeah, it's a special moment between coach and player, right? These guys have given so much of themselves for the betterment of our team. They made sacrifices to be special. And it's the last time I'm going to see them. I've said this to my guys, I'm 58 years old and I may see each of them maybe five more times in my life. I'm not sure where I came up with that number five, but it seems fairly accurate to me that I'm not going to see them anymore. They're going to go on in life and maybe they'll be back for an alumni game or come and watch a game, but that's going to be it. It's winding down. It's one of those times I wanted to take in and they know how I felt about them and how special they've been to our program.