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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2006Josh CarterBilly GillispieAcie Law IVDALLAS, TEXAS COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: Very competitive game against a great team, and I think we got not a great team but a pretty darn good team ourself, and give those guys credit for winning. They did a great job. We couldn't handle them in the lane and too many offensive rebounds, too many drives to the basket too close to the basket. We kept competing, gave ourselves an opportunity. But we just never could get the stop when we needed it or the defensive rebounds to put us over the hump. Q. Talk about at that final -- not the final play, but the play where Joseph ended up taking the three-pointer, what happened, what were they doing defensively? ACIE LAW: They was in a man. We worked on that play, double down, me to come off the ball screen, set the down screen for Dominique or Josh and Joe to pop. We knew that they was going to smooth it down like two -- down two or three, I am not sure. We was going for a 3. And I knew they was expecting me or Dominique to shoot the shot or Josh. We always work on that play in practice, Joe the pop out on the back end of it. LaMarcus made a great defensive play. Joe didn't make the shot and was downhill from there. Q. Josh, what was your situation on that play because you had been hitting 3s all day? JOSH CARTER: Well, me or Dominique come off the down screen and Dominique just happened to be over there, he just came off and I was just in the corner just in case Acie just came off the screen and he could drive and penetrate and pitch to me. Q. (Inaudible)? JOSH CARTER: Well, no, the guy was guarding me Acie went the other way, so wasn't open. ACIE LAW: It's my fault. I should have took the ball that way and made a play for him. But I just -- I knew that way I was going to go back to Dominique. I knew he was going to go to Joe, I had confidence in Joe, Josh had been hitting the whole game, and I should have went and made that play for him. I had confidence in Joe to make that shot for us, and he was just unable to make it for us. Q. Talk about Josh last two games, what he has brought to this offense? ACIE LAW: Great for us, not only offense, he has been doing a great job rebounding. He's getting better each day defensively. He's just maturing. Shows you all the ability he has here in the Big 12 when things are getting tough, everybody is stepping up, raising their game up, trying to defend real well. Josh has done a great job showing everybody what he can do, and the sky is the limit for him if he just listens to coach and works on his game, because he has got a lot of talent. Q. On the play that Joseph ended up taking the 3, the way you talk about it, is Joseph on that play actually an option to take that 3 -- ACIE LAW: That's the second option. I am going to come off the board screen, then it is a down screen or Dominique and they played the down screen well and Dominique recognized it and he went to Joe. Joe just didn't make the shot. If we were in that situation again, I would run the same play, give it to Dominique -- I am sure Dominique would give it to Joe because Joe would make that shot for us in that situation. Q. Can you discuss Tucker's effect on that game? It's one thing on offense, late they switched him on to you -- ACIE LAW: He's a great player, player of the year in our league. He can do it all, all type of plays. He's great for them. He had 26 and 13, just dominant performance. He's a great player, I mean, that pretty much sums it up about P.J. He's just a phenomenal talent. Q. Speak to just feeling it in your hometown, I guess, how comfortable you have been shooting it up here? JOSH CARTER: I am always pretty confident in myself that I can make shots. They were just falling this weekend. It was good to have it at home, but I mean, it would have been better if we would have won. Q. There's some guys in Indianapolis right now that are deciding who should be in and who shouldn't be in the NCAA tournament. What would you tell them about this team? ACIE LAW: I think we should be in, but like I said before, it's out of our hands. All we can do is just sit back and pray and hopefully they will let us in. We think we deserve to get in. We think we did enough, but it's up to the committee. I don't know that look at or what of you hopefully they will let us in sounds sound at end. Q. Follow on that the NCAA tournament, what do you think you are chances are? COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: What do I think? I am not a politician. I haven't been. I won't be. You don't have to be when you play in the Big 12. You finished fourth, you win your first game in the tournament, you play a team that's hopefully going to go to the Final 4, unless we get put in the same bracket, and you know, there's no question we have won 8 in a row. I don't know if anybody has a longer winning streak our last four losses that we have had over the season have been today, Texas on the road, Oklahoma on the road and Kansas at home. All those guys are pretty darn good. So we're going to get to keep on playing in the NCAA tournament and I think we're going to represent this conference very well. Thank you. Q. Talk about how -- the movement of the ball today? You guys had 19 assists only 6 turnovers. COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: I thought we did after we got started, they were scoring too much on us, we couldn't get them slowed down at all, and they did a great job in transition of putting the pressure on us, but what we were able to do is make some shots and we started playing inside out and Acie did a fantastic job. He's really come to be a great player. He's always been a good player but he's become a great player, offensively, defensively, leadershipwise, everything. He got the ball where we needed to. He made so many good plays that don't show up anywhere in the stat charts of getting guys shots, moving guys where they needed to be, getting the ball in the post, putting guys in position where they can get the ball to the post. He played a fantastic game for somebody that really -- I am not saying -- I am not saying someone here doesn't, but if you really understand basketball, man alive, it was one of the best performances I have ever seen. He didn't shoot it as well as he does sometimes, but man alive, he played a great game. I am not disrespecting anyone in here as far as basketball knowledge. So many little subtle things that he did to make everybody on our team much better put him in great positions to score. That's the reason we were able to come back and have a chance to beat a really good team. Q. What does it do for your offense when Josh is shooting the ball like that, and has his defense improved that much where you are able to get him more minutes? COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: He was a little overmatched defensively. Those guys are really hard to guard. They did a really good job of attacking us off the dribble, because that's the way you attack pressure, we tried to pressure. We didn't do a good enough of -- we were always on our heels in the first half because they were just gripping us into transition. And when they got it down there they were just beating us off the dribble. We weren't in help position close enough to help enough. And not only Josh, but just too many guys got beat off the dribble. But those guys are extremely hard to guard off the dribble because they can all shoot it so well. So Tucker is a good shooter. Those other guys are great 3-point shooters. But he's just a hard guy to stop off the dribble. It's hard to keep him out of the paint. That's where the game is won. They got the ball in the paint too much. When they missed too much, they controlled the offensive board in-the-paint and we had a lot of opportunities to get defensive rebounds and tried to keep them out of the paint, and we couldn't do it. They just whipped us in the lane today. Q. Did you make somewhat subtle switch with Joseph Jones as to where and when and how he was posting up between the halves? COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: No, not really. I don't think that Joe was sealing his man as well as he needed to in the first half. Against the zone, I thought we had a lot of opportunities after ball reversal for Joe to seal a little bit better in the first half. He was open, so he didn't feel the need to go and seal his man away from -- of where the ball was, and he changed that a little bit. I am not being critical of Joe at all. That's normal thing for anybody to do is if you are open you are going to stay where you are, but he started posting up a little bit closer to the basket against the man and zone in the second half and he probably was a little bit more effective. Q. On the play when -- 10 seconds when Joseph took the 3, what did you see as the play was unfolding? Did you expect him to take that shot, were you hoping that it could get in the hands of maybe one of their other 3-point shooters? COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: Joe can shoot the ball as good as anybody on our team. But that -- he shouldn't have shot it today, and Joe knows that. They did a good job. We didn't set as good a screen as we could have. I like the play. We didn't have to have a 3-point shot. I thought that Acie was going to come off a double screen even though they were trapping it. I thought I was going to be able to either get in-the-paint and score and get us a two or penetrate and pitch for Josh, or I thought Dominique would get a double screen and shoot a 3 or continue the play. But when we reversed it, all our guys have great confidence in each other, and me too. It was my fault because I called that play. Looking back I probably should have said let Acie go flat with it. It is a good play. I thought Acie might drive it on the first side anyway, penetrate and pitch for Josh or Dominique. As you can tell, when you ask these guys, nobody -- nobody wants to put the blame on anybody else, and that's why they are a good team. They should say, Coach didn't know what he was doing on a lot of things. But they never do. They always say, well, it was a good play, I could have done this or whatever, that's why it's such a special group. If you ask anybody on our team what happened, they would say, well, I didn't do this or I didn't do that, or we didn't do this well enough or whatever. That's why it's a special team and it's so much fun to coach. But it was my fault. I probably should have either called another timeout right there and told them exactly what we wanted to do, or just reminded Joe that we didn't really need to have 3 point shot at that point. But when he gets it I am totally confident he can make it. Give Texas credit. That was a big play, but that wasn't the play of the game. Plays in the game were all in-the-paint on the other end when they drove too much and couldn't get a defensive rebound. Give those guys credit. Good luck to them. They are a great team. Q. Talk about how the complex of this matchup has changed now that you have your program where it is? COACH BILLY GILLISPIE: Well, I think that we're getting to the point to where hopefully one of these days it's going to be a rivalry. We're working towards it. We have unbelievable respect for them. I was watching our guys shake their hands before the game and I think we're to the point to where people have unbelievable respect for us too and that was really a nice sight for me. It was also good coming in to -- we're going to try to emulate has done with their program and they have done a fantastic job, Coach has done a great job of making a national power on a yearly basis. We're going to try to emulate that as best we can. It's very difficult to do. But one of things coming into the tournament that I thought was really good for Texas A&M is Colorado came here wanting a piece of us, and we played very well yesterday and they have got a really good team and today Texas was really mad, wanting a piece of us, and I thought our guys performed well in both games against two really good teams. I think just because of that, I think that we're making strides in the right direction. I don't know if that has been the case in the past.
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