BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 7, 2001

Gale Catlett

COACH GALE CATLETT: My general comments would be we started poorly - one of our poorest starts of the year, and I don't know why. But it certainly dug us a big hole. I thought we were 16 down but our SID said we were 18 down. I thought the kids came back nicely. Then I thought the way we started the second half was great. Then for some reason, and I think it had to do with Villanova, after we got it back to three, well, we made a few plays, missed a few plays, they made a few plays and got the lead back out again, then they were just too good. We couldn't get them stopped. They ran the court very well, and they attacked us very well, shot the ball great. The last two games we played, we've been a great defensive team all year. This is one of the better half-court defensive teams I've coached at West Virginia, holding people under 40 percent for the year. And the last two games we played Boston College at home on senior night, then today here, the people shot over 50 percent. I've got to try to analyze this somehow. I don't know what it is. But our defense is not like it was during that four-game winning streak when we had the longest winning streak in the league, won four games in a row, thought we were going to the NCA, and play Miami down there, did a great job against them, held them to 36 percent, lost to a goal-tending call down there. Still, we go back home, this game here, defensively we're just not where we were. I didn't think we played very well offensively. They zoned us. Most teams can't zone us because we move the ball and we've got shooters and we've got inside people. And today we didn't look like the same team. We didn't have any rhythm on offense starting the game. We didn't have any outside shots going in, we didn't have any penetration, we didn't just run the -- we ran into the flow of the game. And that's disappointing, because it was a big game and I know our guys really wanted to win, and I think Villanova did a heck of a job. Any questions?

COACH GALE CATLETT: What's your question?

COACH GALE CATLETT: I've won almost 600 games in my career, I know how to win against zone. We tried to attack zone. It just didn't work. We didn't make our shots. We didn't get it inside. We didn't run our transition game like we're supposed to. Do you know the best way to beat a zone defense?

COACH GALE CATLETT: I'm not trying to -- just get the ball down the court quickly before the zone gets set up and attack them in transition. We didn't even do that. Some of it had to do with us not rebounding the ball properly. But ironically some of it had to do with our shot selection because we just didn't -- we took bad shots and gave them transition baskets and we did not get down there and take good shots in transition. So it made us set up and play against half-court defense. Our outside shooters didn't shoot, our insiders didn't shoot, our penetrators didn't make it and we weren't very good.