NIT SEASON TIP-OFF

November 26, 2004

Tommy Amaker

Q. Tommy, did you sense any lag effect from the difficult loss to Arizona on Wednesday?

TOMMY AMAKER: Well, we certainly tried to guard against it, and I didn't think that would be a factor, but maybe having looked at the way we played and we're disappointed, but certainly give credit to Providence for the game that they played very well, I thought, and we never could solve their zone. But I don't know if it was anything that was lagging from the previous ballgame. I just think that we turned the ball over, we didn't seem to be very sharp and confident offensively, and I thought that really allowed our defense to suffer because of that. We shot horrendously from the foul line, so I think any time you're struggling to score and then you get to the foul line and you can't cash in, it's very deflating. We had a lot of deflating plays. So we're disappointed. I don't know what the actual reason for the way that we played this afternoon is, but we're certainly disappointed. But we know that Providence did a fantastic job in taking advantage of everything that we weren't able to do.

TOMMY AMAKER: I think if you would have told me before the game that Ryan Gomes would score 11 points, we would have been fairly happy and pleased. I think it also shows you how good of a player he really is. He didn't force anything, he was very efficient. I was impressed with that. But I thought Ronny, we wanted to have a little bigger body on Gomes to start with, and I thought he did a very nice job in that regard. But it also shows you the kind of player that that kid is, he's unselfish and it was a better afternoon for some of his teammates and he played right to those guys and I thought that was a nice tribute to the way that he plays.

TOMMY AMAKER: We'll look at it. I'm sure we'll try to dissect some things and see where we can do a better job of attacking the zone. That's one of the thing that we have done very well, which surprising as our free throw shooting, which is something that we've been able to do fairly well this year, except when we've gotten here to New York. So kind of perplexing for us, because looking at Dion Harris's line and Daniel Horton's line and Ronald Coleman's line, guys who are going to have to make shots for us, we didn't make any. We didn't make a lot of them, I should say but we didn't make enough of them.

TOMMY AMAKER: We're hopeful. I think he's a youngster that if you ask him, he would have said, "yeah, I can go right now." But, you know, it's a long season and we recognize that he needed to keep strengthening his shoulder and we were just concerned if he takes one wicked shot for this tournament that it could have set him back for a long time. So I think we erred more on the caution side of his injury and we think that's the right way to go. But I think it's going to be an ongoing issue with him all year. Just depends on how severe it could be for him. I think right now we're trying to see if we can get it as strong as we can without him and we certainly obviously miss him, but we're not here to talk about the players we don't have. We didn't do a good job with the players we do have.

TOMMY AMAKER: Well, I think he needs to play better. I think for us to be a good team, our back board has to play better. It goes without saying, with those two guys, Dion and Daniel, it not putting everything on their shoulders, but if we are going to have a successful year, a lot of it is going to depend on how those two kids play. So when you say his all-around game, I was disappointed in his fouls. He's a sophomore, and I think he has to be smarter. He picked up his second foul if the first half which was a frustration foul, so I was very disappointed in that. He's a creative player; he's a kid who can create shots. I mean, we need him to do those things. So he's probably going to take a few shots that are going to be -- well, he's got to create them. But certainly, he also has to play smart and I think we have to do a better job defensively on the ball. I'm not sure we did that very well from our guard spot or rebound from our guard spot.

TOMMY AMAKER: I thought Courtney gave some pretty solid minutes. We got down a little bit and it's not the best game in terms of chasing, but I thought he gave us -- he had a double-double and played 25 minutes, so he played significant minutes. I was pleased with Courtney's production this afternoon, better than what he did in the previous game.

TOMMY AMAKER: Well, winning is losing -- it's a fine line between winning and losing, especially it seems like in college basketball. I think for our kids, I think we know that. I think we know how quickly the game can change, one way or the other. So we've tried to preach that and teach that and coach that, as well. I think that we're cognizant of those things. I think this afternoon, it snowballed on us and can he can't find our way out of it and they got a double-digit lead which really hurt us. There are going to be some critical stretches, one or two plays in a ballgame that could decide the game. Hopefully we are going to find our way on the winning side of those plays.

TOMMY AMAKER: Well, this was a tough schedule for us coming into this weekend, coming into this tournament. We knew that, but, you know, you find out a lot about yourselves and we thought we found out good really good things against Arizona. And found out some things that if we're not sharp, if we're not completely together at all times how quickly the game can change for us and we can't find out way out. So a lot of learning experiences for our ballclub for these two ballgames, but as you mentioned, the road gets even tougher for our team in terms of our schedule.