BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 4, 1999

Craig Esherick

Jameel Watkins

CRAIG ESHERICK: I thought a couple things in relation to what Miami did on defense and offense were keys to the game. I thought in the first half, Miami was not playing well, and I think they prevented us both on defense and on offense from pulling away from him. Johnny Helmsley hit a real big 3 for them on one of their inbounds plays, and I think we would have had probably a 7- or a 10-point lead and had he not gone down and scored. That was a big play. I thought Johnny's 3-point shot that he made from the wing was a big play. Mario Bland hurt us on the inside an awful lot. I thought we did a real good job on Tim James, but Mario Bland and Johnny really hurt us in the second half and I think the most important thing Miami did was it picked up their defense. Their defense was very good the second half. They prevented us from getting into any kind of flow on offense and they prevented -- they put hand-up on shooters. They blocked a lot of jump shots they prevented us from getting good looks, I thought they we were open on the inside, but they put so much pressure on the ball that it made it pretty difficult for us to throw the ball to Ruben. When Ruben did catch the ball or Jameel did catch the ball, they made it very tough for us to shoot. Miami's got a good team and I don't think that losing to Miami, you know, is something that we should worry about. I think that they have a very good team and they should do well in the NCAA tournament.

CRAIG ESHERICK: Probably. I remember one he made on the left side closer to the press side of the course that was a big 3, and I think that probably was it, yes. I thought the game was going -- I think we were in a zone, and just miscommunication. We certainly weren't trying to give Johnny open shots, I can tell you that. He scored 38 on us the first time we played him at Georgetown. .

CRAIG ESHERICK: Mario Bland did a real good job physically against us the second half. I think some of that, we were attempting to put pressure on the ball. They had a 5-, 3-point lead and we were trying to get back in the game. And we were worried about Tim James and we were worried about Johnny. They did a good job of getting the ball to Mario Bland. They have a smart team. They have a veteran team. They have a team full of guys that have been around and they have talent. They have very talented players: Johnny Helmsley and Tim James, Mario Bland and Vernon Jennings, those four guys are very, very good.

CRAIG ESHERICK: I hope we do. No one has told me that we will yet, but I'm hoping we do. I think the way we played in the months of February and March, I think that we have played ourselves at least into consideration. But I have not been told that we definitely are going to get one. If we get one, we will take it in a second. We will play, go anywhere, play anybody.

Q. Overall assessment of Miami?

JAMEEL WATKINS: I think they are a very good team. They did a lot of stuff inside. They have some great shooters. We played a good same and I guess they just won tonight.

JAMEEL WATKINS: I think the guards were chasing down long rebounds and that's something we had -- we haven't worried about coming into this game.