BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 6, 2002

John Linehan

Tim Welsh

COACH TIM WELSH: It was a tremendous basketball game. Obviously, any time a game goes down to the last possession, tournament time, it's an exciting finish. Our kids, I told them in my eyes they were winners today. Obviously, we're not moving on. We're done. But, you know, what they did out there on the court today will always be special to me, as a coach, with the struggling season we've had. To go out there and really execute the game plan that we put together almost to perfection, I thought was special. And you just, you know, obviously are very disappointed for John more than anybody. More than myself, more than the program, anything. I just wanted to get him a taste of this tournament more than one day. It's a tough way to lose. Our kids just scratched and clawed, and they made the big play at the end. We just didn't have enough time to make another one. But it was certainly a tremendous basketball game, and I was proud of our guys playing against a team that I think is, you know, an excellent basketball team. Five bounces away probably from having 24 wins.

COACH TIM WELSH: Well, we wanted to disrupt them with some traps, trap them, start with the big guy, trapping him. Wing-trapping, full-court trapping. Keep them off balance. Try not to give them too much of one thing, but keep them off balance. And with our pressure, try to, you know, have John come up and rattle people. And that's probably why we went with the three guards a lot. We wanted to use quickness not only on the defensive end. We were struggling to score in the first half, so we had to try to spread the floor and use a little bit more off the bounce. Needed to get to the rim and open the court and get the ball inside. The kids did absolutely everything 100 percent that I asked tonight. You know, I got a heavy heart right now for John and the kids. But, you know, I'll always remember what they did today was special. Just not special enough.

COACH TIM WELSH: We try and scramble the game a little bit. Obviously, when we get into a half-court grind-it-out punching match with them, we're going to lose. We wanted to make sure that the game got scrambled and they didn't get comfortable in anything offensively. That meant sometimes giving up some baskets. Obviously they got to the free throw line a lot. But we didn't want them to get inside to Sweetney and to Wilson because they're dangerous. Our pressure is sometimes going to be effective and sometimes more effective than others. Tonight it was pretty effective and got us back in control of the game. Then Sweetney came back in the game and really hurt us in that one four-minute stretch when we were up five or seven, I think. I think we were up seven.

COACH TIM WELSH: We called a timeout in between the free throws. I wanted to set up the play before they could set their defense. I knew they didn't have any timeouts left. So we called a timeout in between the two foul shots to hopefully maybe number one freeze them on the second and, number two, to set up a play. That was the exact play we wanted. We wanted Abdul to go to the rim. That worked well. Obviously, they came back and ran right back at us and it worked well for them. We just didn't have enough time to get up the floor. John got it up the floor and ended up on the pavement as he was dribbling. So how he got there, I don't know. You saw it. You write about it - whatever way you want.

COACH TIM WELSH: I was guarding him, just trying to stay in front of him. He was pushing it, he was kind of out of control a little bit, but he came down and made the good pass to Wilson.

COACH TIM WELSH: When I took it up?

COACH TIM WELSH: Yeah. I was just trying -- I saw it was like 3.6 seconds left. I just tried to get it up and tried to get as close to the basket. Tried to get a good look at the basket. Got tripped up a little bit.

COACH TIM WELSH: Well, you know, you never want to point to that because that's part of the game. Obviously, you want to try to avoid that. But, you know, we never got into a good rhythm. I think some of our younger players got better and developed because of it. But, you know, certainly our win-loss record I know would have been better with our guys out there. You take your starting three or four man off of any team in this league, and I think any coach would agree it's tough. So... But we tried to not make any excuses. It is what it is. You got to point it out, because it's there. When you see those two kids sitting there that really are both double-figure scorers. But, you know, we have confidence in our younger kids. They developed. I just feel bad that that happened during John's senior year, more than anything is that he didn't get a chance to play with a full deck out there - the team that I saw in early October.

JOHN LINEHAN: This is the toughest because, I mean, we had a chance to win this game. We were up, you know, most of the second half. And we just fought all the way to the end. When you lose like this, you know, last, you know, last-second shot or, you know, a basket with three seconds left, it's pretty hard.

COACH TIM WELSH: Yeah, I mean, you know, hey... I expect to win every game we play in this league. I give our guys that attitude. So, you know, the pride thing about losing by one, I really don't believe in that. I'm proud of the way our players played. But certainly I know when I wake up tomorrow I'm going to feel like death. It doesn't matter if we were the 10th seed or the 2nd seed. When you lose, you feel the same way. And, you know, I'm crushed right now for the kids because they wanted to play some more, and, you know, they played well enough to play some more. But it just didn't happen.