BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 7, 2002

Craig Esherick

COACH CRAIG ESHERICK: I thought we obviously had a chance to win this ball game. And I thought a couple things that Miami did in overtime and also during the course of the game really hurt us. I thought Barnes really hit some tough shots against us during the course of the entire game. Then in the overtime I thought Rice hit some big shots. Hit the three, a deep jump shot, hit that little runner over Wesley or Mike. Rice has done that all season. Rice has made some big plays down the stretch in a lot of different ball games. I thought we had done a pretty good job on him during the course of the game. But I thought at the end of the game he had hit some really big shots. Salmons is such a good player that he can shoot the ball the way he did tonight and still have a heck of an effect on the game. Double figures on rebounds and double figures on assists. That's a heck of a mark of a player, a guy that doesn't really score that much today and still has an effect on the game. I think that, you know, certainly we played well enough to win the ball game. And I had the same feeling I have today a whole lot this season, a little bit too much. But I think this team that we have is a good team. I don't know a whole lot of coaches that would want to play against this team. We're going to have three long days before Sunday, I can tell you that. And I told the team after the game, I said, "We have now put our destiny in somebody else's hands. We got three days to wait: Friday, Saturday and Sunday." And I told the guys that are coming back next year, I said, "You need to remember this feeling. This is a helpless feeling. We have no idea what's going to happen. We have no idea if we're in or out. And we have three days where that's all we're going to be able to think about, is whether the NCAA committee is going to pick us or not pick us." I think we certainly played well enough to deserve a bid. But I also know that I would have felt a whole lot better about that decision if we had won this game. You know, there's a lot that goes in to whether the committee takes us or not, and a lot of what happens with us has nothing to do with Georgetown as much as it has to do with a lot of the other teams and the other conferences, the other big conferences. And we're just going to have to wait and see what happens. Any questions?

COACH CRAIG ESHERICK: We didn't have that play called, I can tell you that (laughing). We called a play. We called a play. That certainly was not it. I got asked a similar question like that yesterday. And if I told you what the play was, you wouldn't know what it was, so there's no sense in me even talking about that. I don't want to put the blame on anybody on our team for any one particular play. There were all sorts of plays. We were up by ten. There were all sorts of plays that permitted Miami to get back into the ball game. I don't want to talk about it. We had a play called.

COACH CRAIG ESHERICK: We had a play called. We had a play called.