BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 7, 2001

Perry Clark

John Salmons

Dwayne Wimbley

COACH PERRY CLARK: Obviously, it's never, ever a good time to lose. Certainly tonight wouldn't have been the one that I picked. I give Pittsburgh a lot of credit. I thought that they were really crisp in what they wanted to do. I thought they executed very well. In the first half, it certainly hurt us when we had John and Darius on the bench for long periods of time. We were not deep enough, especially tonight, to overcome them missing as many minutes as they missed in the first half, and Pittsburgh did a very good job of taking advantage of that. Second half, we were down just 11 at half. I thought that we came out the second half and had a chance and had the thing cut and Greer really took over. I thought his baskets for about a four- minute stretch, three-, four-minute stretch there, he took the game over. We didn't do a very good job of guarding him. That's why he's an All-League player. He did what an All-League player's supposed to do. When a game's up for grabs like that, he took over. We just didn't have answers for him. Certainly is a very disappointing loss. We came in playing good basketball, and, unfortunately, we got to go home.

COACH PERRY CLARK: Yeah, I thought so. Normally when a guy has two, I take him out, I try to go with John because of his maturity and how well he's been playing. Then he picked up his third. I didn't want to chance the same thing with Darius. As long as I felt we were within shot distance, every time I was about to make a move to put him back in, we would come up within a bucket or a play, we'd come back up within shot distance. It was a gamble. I thought it worked. I thought in the second half we had our chances. Like I said, Pittsburgh just seemed like they had answers for every time we made a run.

COACH PERRY CLARK: I just think he was out of -- I really think he never got in a rhythm. I think that he takes -- I think the kid really wanted to win. I think he really pressured himself. He puts a lot of pressure on himself offensively to step up and to make things happen for us. And I really just thought that, you know, not -- our youth showed, you know. I thought we got a little flustered, a little frustrated, and there were certain things that were in our control like the missed foul shots, the turnovers in the first half. I thought we put them on the line too much. Those things I thought we had the ability to control, and we didn't control those things and they just compounded with the fact that Darius and John were on the bench.

COACH PERRY CLARK: Well, you've seen him play all year. He certainly is our heart and soul. He is the one guy that if you ask me who we can't afford to lose, I would say it's John. Certainly, just because he does so many things, he keeps us organized, especially how well he's been playing, and that was just -- I mean, him picking up his fourth was for me even more critical than the three he picked up in the first half because we were in striking position then. I mean, I couldn't put him on Greer, who, you know, he would normally have matched up on. It just really altered what we wanted to do.

DWAYNE WIMBLEY: We look to people who are going to score the most. We just had to look for other people to score since we didn't have our normal scorers out there. It hurt us a lot. We didn't have a lot of organization in the first half.

COACH PERRY CLARK: You know, that had nothing to do with foul trouble. You know, they just -- they had momentum. They were feeling it, and certainly they were very aggressive on the glass. I think that, you know, that hurt us in the beginning. It gets back to the things, you take away the foul trouble, then you still have the ability to control. We did not do a very good job of managing those things, and it hurt us. Whether or not we were a little frustrated or whatever, that's maturity and we got to get past that and certainly handle the things we're capable of controlling.

COACH PERRY CLARK: No. I still felt like at half time we could win the game. I mean, so again, I thought we were in position. I thought Greer came up with some huge baskets for them. And that was kind of, you know, the working margin. When John would have foul trouble, then James picked up his fourth, we really didn't have a good matchup for him and he took advantage of it and that's what, you know, an All-League player is supposed to do.

JOHN SALMONS: Yeah, I was pretty frustrated out there. I picked up my third or fourth foul, I had confidence in my teammates that they can go out there and compete with Pittsburgh. And for the most part, I think they did a good job of that. But there was a couple of things that didn't go our way, a couple plays that didn't go our way. And like Coach said, Greer really stepped up in the game. He had some good baskets for them. They did a good job.

JOHN SALMONS: It was hard, me being on the bench knowing if I was out there some plays could have went our way. It took away a little bit of my aggressiveness on defense. I couldn't really pressure up with nobody. I couldn't guard. I was on the bench, I saw him going out there and scoring and rebounding and doing what a great player's supposed to do. It was hard. It wasn't nothing that I really could do about it. That was the most frustrating thing.

JOHN SALMONS: It was just one of them things. It was just in the midst of the play. I saw him going up for an open shot, and I was trying to contest it. I made a bad decision.

COACH PERRY CLARK: You know, like I said when I came up, I don't think it's ever a good time to lose. You know, we finished the season with two really great wins to give us some momentum coming in. Certainly I thought we were ready to play tonight. It's just disappointing. You know, we had never been in this sort of foul trouble all season. To come in, and to probably the most important game this season, to have those two guys sit out most of the game with foul trouble, and I mean, it certainly affected us. I'm not blaming anybody, but it certainly is disappointing. You know, you got to give Pittsburgh credit. We still had a shot, and it came down to the second half. They stepped up and made some plays and we didn't. And I think it's something that we got to go back, we got to look at, we got to analyze, and do a better job. Because like I said before, if you look at in the first half how many times we sent them to the line, if we had cut our fouling in half, if we had not turned it over twelve times, not turned the ball over, I don't know how many foul shots we missed but we missed quite a few, if we had made those, then all of a sudden we put ourselves where we're not as far down and don't have as high a mountain to climb. Certainly we have to show more maturity to be able to handle adversity better than we did tonight.

COACH PERRY CLARK: I don't know. I certainly think we would have a shot, but I don't know.