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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2006Jim BoeheimEric DevendorfGerry McNamaraDemetris NicholsNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK COACH JIM BOEHEIM: First of all, I want to start off with a profound abject apology for my language yesterday. I'd like to double what I said but take away those words. Second thing is I'll tell you, when it got to -- we caught Connecticut a little down and got out. But when they caught us, and they caught us a lot, we kept going. We'd get going. They caught us three or four times. Usually, when that happens, you're kind of go away a little bit, but these guys wouldn't let it go away. Gerry wouldn't let it go away. He was playing on about half a leg today but, you know, he amazes me every time I see him play. He's got more guts than anybody I've ever coached. The other freshmen here has a lot of them, too. Our whole team, at the end we're going with 6-3, 6-3. Connecticut is a great team. We caught them a little bit early, but then once they got going, we just played well. I thought we isolated and ran our offense the best that we've run it all year. Except for we have to learn about taking the ball out of bounds because we made the same mistake tonight. We gave them four points at the end of that game where we could have had the lead in regulation. When Gerry got the ball coming down, set something up, I told him to drive and throw it to one of three guys at the end of regulation. He looked at me and said, "Can I shoot it?" I said, "They're not gonna let you shoot it. But if they do, shoot it" (laughter). As soon as he released it, there was never a doubt that ball was nothing but net. But going to overtime, I still would feel the odds were all against us. But these guys just would not, they would not back off. The thing with Connecticut, you know, I've already told Mike, we're going to play our home game here next year (laughter). We can't beat them any place else, you know. They've killed us four straight games except for the two here. I think it helps you a little bit - a little bit - to play that first night. You kind of get going. But the guts these guys had, our five starters played 36 minutes last night and they came back and had to play pretty close to the same thing tonight. I just think that's amazing to me that they could play that many minutes. It's a great win. I'd say it's one of the best, if not the best, that we've ever had at Syracuse. That's over -- I've only been there, though, 44 years so I don't know. I can't remember Vic Hansen's games. But for us, this is it. THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Gerry, it seemed obvious you wanted the ball on the next to last possession. Can you talk about that possession and wanting to take the shot after that. GERRY MCNAMARA: Yeah, I wanted to take the shot but I thought Josh Wright and Eric were as good candidates as any. I thought Josh got a good shot. I thought he probably got a 12-, 13-, 14-footer. He put a good shot up there. It was soft. Even though he missed it, we still had a chance to rebound it. I thought the possession was quality but at the same time I want to take every last second shot. COACH JIM BOEHEIM: He missed two in a row, I wanted to try somebody else. Like any out-of-bounds play, we threw it to Mooky because we knew he was going to make a free-throw. Q. How would you compare last night's shot with today's? GERRY MCNAMARA: I said yesterday's shot and the certain situation and under the circumstances was the most important, but I'd have to change that to tonight, or today. We needed it, and like Coach said, I've been around great players and great teams, and there's no doubt we've struggled at times this year. I'm more proud of this team with the way we came in here these last two games and won than any team I've played on just because we could have laid over, came down here, just laid up an egg and we hadn't. We came in here with a purpose, and what we did today was pretty special because we think very highly of Connecticut. Q. Gerry, were you surprised that you were able to get the ball? GERRY MCNAMARA: I wasn't surprised I was able to get the ball. The thing was, is I stopped pretty far out. I think that's why it mixed them up a little bit. I took the shot early just in case I did miss it, we had a chance for a tipout. I did that. I think Rashad Anderson was on me. I stopped really early. I think that might have threw them off a little bit. I stopped, I think behind the NBA line. I did it quick. That's the way I wanted to do it because I wanted to get the shot off clean. I think that might have threw them off a little bit. But I'm a little surprised that I got the ball. I caught it pretty deep. I caught it about three-quarters of court. Yeah, I am a little surprised. Q. Gerry, throughout your career against Connecticut you've had some struggles. Does this game make up for all those difficult times in the past? GERRY MCNAMARA: Well, there's no doubt that defensively they play me better than anyone. They're incredible. I think they may be No. 1 in the nation, in opponent field goal percentage, I think they're up there. I mean, there's no secret why they win games. They're great on defense, they have great athletes and great offensive players. When you have both of those going for you, it's tough to beat them. They've played great on me. They've been there on every catch, they hedge me on ball screens. I've had a difficult time. In the first half I just tried to get everyone involved and it worked. Q. Assuming this win gets you in the field for the Big Dance, and obviously it should have, is there an exhale now or are you thinking of defending your championship here? COACH JIM BOEHEIM: No, we play one game at a time at Syracuse. We're going to try to come out tomorrow. Whoever we play, it's a great team. You know, we're just going to try to come out and play, you know. We didn't need to win it last year and we won it. We're going to try to, you know, win tomorrow and go from there. Q. For Eric and Gerry, can you talk about the last possessions for Connecticut. Marcus got a good look. COACH JIM BOEHEIM: Our defensive specialist. ERIC DEVENDORF: Oh, yeah. Well, Coach had been telling me all year that I been struggling on defense, which I have. But I think today I played pretty well on defense, and I was keeping people in front of me. That's all I tried to do on the last play against Marcus. Obviously, he got an open look, but I'm just glad it didn't go in. GERRY MCNAMARA: I think one thing you have to add is Marcus is extremely talented at finding his teammates. One of the things he does so well is get in the lane and create for other people. He did a good job of shooting it. I think no one else would have got a better shot, because he got in the middle and everyone went out to everyone else. I think that's where he was so intelligent. He put up a good shot just like Josh did and it just didn't go down. He made a great play. I don't think it was lack of defense. I think it was an intelligent play on his part. Q. Coach, the passing of Gerry and Eric in the first half. COACH JIM BOEHEIM: Well, we wanted to, believe it or not, we were holding the ball. Doesn't really look like that, but we were trying to hold the ball if we didn't have a transition. We got 14, 16 points in transition, which we wanted to take but when we didn't have that, we wanted to spread them out. They've been doubling Gerry on the pick and roll so we wanted to get that set wide so we could go back to the guy. Terrence made a couple big plays off that, Mooky got a dunk off that. Then we wanted to try to have a little more patience and make them play defense. They pressure so much that we wanted to spread them out and try to get Gerry into the lane with the ball rather than looking to shoot the three. The more he got in the lane, the more they're going to come and help, and our big guys are looking more for the ball and finishing plays inside. That's the difference really with our team, in these two games and in the season. We've really been a perimeter team and we haven't been able to get in the lane and get our big guys involved. We've been able to get our big guys involved and Demetris came up tonight. We've needed him, we've missed him for a while. He stepped up big tonight. The jumper he made in the lane was huge. He just got out in transition and battled all day on defense. We need him to be there, and he was there big-time for us tonight. Q. Demetris, in the first games against Connecticut they got off to such a big lead. You got off to a big lead today. How much confidence did that give you that you could beat these guys? DEMETRIS NICHOLS: That gave me a confidence and I think it gave the team confidence, you know. We all thought that we could beat them, you know. Nobody really had faith in us or hope in us, you know, so we kind of had a chip on our shoulder a little bit. We just go over there and we just tried to leave it out on the court, you know, and just play great defense because that was going to determine the game. Q. Can you talk about the contributions you got from guys like Josh and Arinze? COACH JIM BOEHEIM: Josh was tremendous. I didn't hesitate at all at the end. He was supposed to drive the ball in the lane and if he couldn't get there then kick it out to Gerry or Eric. But he got there. I told him in the locker room, "I'll take that shot every time". He made that floater earlier. He makes that shot, I'll take that shot every time. I thought he was very good today. I thought he really did a nice job. I thought Louie battled. He had six rebounds. I just thought he battled hard the whole time. We got out-rebounded, we had more turnovers. They only turned over 11 times and shot the heck out of the ball from the free throw line. I mean, it was -- this was -- we had to overcome a lot of things out there today, and it was a tremendous accomplishment. But those two guys that you mentioned, Arinze did a nice job for a couple minutes in there, got a couple rebounds. But I just thought, I'm very proud of these guys. This was some effort today. Q. Gerry, after the game your Coach said on ESPN you played with half a leg. How healthy are you today, and going forward how are you feeling? GERRY MCNAMARA: Well, I had an injury earlier in the season. It kind of lingered with the groin. But it's been easier for me to play during the regular season because of breaks. Coming down here, we were a little worried if we kept advancing how my body would recover just because I've never given it a chance to heal fully. Now I got a couple treatments. I felt good. I think, you know, Coach and I talked about it, and Mike Hopkins, the assistant, we talked before the game about having a game plan and picking my spots, when to be aggressive, when not to be, when to get in and out of the game. In the first half, we were in and out. I was in and out of the game in the first half. Coach did a good job of getting me a quick one-, two-minute rest then get me back in there. That's really what it came down to. In the second half I had fresh legs because in the first half I was alternating time with Josh Wright and Eric and Louie. Q. (Inaudible). COACH JIM BOEHEIM: The thing is he never even hesitated. That's what bad. He didn't even think about it. ERIC DEVENDORF: Yeah, what Coach said. COACH JIM BOEHEIM: I should have gotten a time-out, should have run and got the time-out. We had one left. ERIC DEVENDORF: But, no, I mean, I was just trying to make a defensive play. Obviously, I made a dumb decision to go up. But it slipped out of my hands, but really I just should have took the ball out and made him foul me. But, I mean, we won the game. COACH JIM BOEHEIM: The interesting thing is Denham Brown made an unbelievable three in the corner against us, five-point game and 28 seconds. That was an unbelievably tough three over there. But that's what they -- they never -- they came back every time. They came back ten different times. We had them down, they came back. When they took the lead in overtime, we were able to still come back. That says a lot about this team. Q. Such an incredible game. Does it add something special since it's against Coach Calhoun? COACH JIM BOEHEIM: No, we obviously needed the game. They're the No. 1 team in the country. If you can beat the No. 1 team in the country, it could be anybody. I mean, it's just a huge win for us. Everybody knows we came in here struggling and, you know, last two or three games. (Inaudible) keeps saying we only won four out of our last thirteen when it was five out of our last ten. He keeps saying that. He never was very good in math anyway. But I guess now we won six out of our last ten or something. This was, you know, obviously, we said it already, you beat the No. 1 team in the country, that's pretty good. They're rested. So, yeah, this is a huge win for us. Thanks. THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
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