BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 10, 2005

Gary Waters

COACH GARY WATERS: As I always do, I give honor to God. Secondly, we all had a whole lot to talk about during the game. You all just ask questions. I'll open it up to the audience.

COACH GARY WATERS: I don't want to make it negative, but what I want to say is that I felt Syracuse dominated us out there - on the boards, inside. It was very difficult for us to handle them inside.

COACH GARY WATERS: Oh, yeah, yeah. We talked about that in the locker room. We said that, you know, we're going to be back here to a BIG EAST tournament, and we've won one, now let's extend and get better and better and learn what we have to do. The thing I gathered from this is they took it to us inside. We have to get better in that area if we're going to be able to be a strong competitor in the BIG EAST.

COACH GARY WATERS: You always think you have a shot, realistically. But McNamara is the player he is. If we were in a man-to-man, I would have said -- and we cut it to 15, I would have said, "Yes, we have an opportunity." But in a zone, you're at someone's defense then, you know. He jumped up and hit two long, long threes, I mean, long threes. I thought it changed the whole complexion.

COACH GARY WATERS: Yes.

COACH GARY WATERS: I'm going to tell you what they did differently. We were a little confused at the beginning on what to do with that. The person that has guarded McNamara for the past two years has been Marquis Webb. He's done a decent job on it. They started a bigger lineup. Their game plan, I realized, was just to go at us. We couldn't offset them with our body, and also at the same time stop McNamara. We had to make a decision, and early we made a decision to stop McNamara and they beat us inside. Then when we made a decision to get out on him -- they had it today. My hat goes off to them, because they had it today. But let me say this, let me finalize this. This was a very good experience for our team and program. We won a game, we were right there in the first game. In the second game we didn't play as well, but I think they now understand what they have to do to get where they have to go. You got to experience it before you can get to someplace, and I think that's what happened with this group, and that's very good. I think for our future, it's going to be much, much brighter because of that.

COACH GARY WATERS: I think it was a part of both. I think we're missing some bodies. Prime example, if we have a player like Adrian Hill in there that can jump and rebound as well as them, then we can compete a little bit better. That's something we're going to have to do, and I think we will because I think we've done very well this year in recruiting, and I also feel the players that are coming back that are sitting out that are injured, they'll be able to help us. It was a part of both. I think the youth out on the floor are starting to learn, and at the same time, you know, we were outmanned a little. And I'm going to say this, I don't think it was as much about their zone, because I thought we got the ball inside, I thought we got it where we wanted, I thought we moved, I thought we got the shots, I thought we just didn't capitalize and I thought they took advantage of that.

COACH GARY WATERS: You're exactly right. I'm going to tell you why that's important. I had to sit and think before I talked to my group today when we went back into the locker room. I could have jumped all on them, screamed, hollered, been pissed and all that. That wouldn't have been any good. The key was that I had to explain to them what our future is, and what we're trying to do and that's very good. That's what we're trying to do, we got to take something positive for this so our kids can get better and better. I'm going to tell you one major positive: We had freshmen and sophomores out there that played a lot of minutes. That's only going to help them for the future. Then when you add more to that, then that's how you have success.

COACH GARY WATERS: Oh, he's improved a great deal. Be exact, that's one of the comments I made in the locker room. I said to them, I said, "Some of you really, really improved from the beginning of the year to the end," and he's the primary one. Be exact, he's probably the most improved player on our entire team. I thought he fought in there. You have to understand, he was doing a lot of fighting in there by himself. They had three in there, three big guys in there fighting, and they fought with him. That's going to be good for his future. Funny thing, you mention him. We were sitting down, I was talking to Byron during our workout today. I said Byron, let me explain something to you. I said "How much you weigh right now?" He said, "I weigh about 265." I said, "Next year, the way we're going to get after other people, press people, you are going to have to lose 10 pounds." He said, "I plan on it, Coach. I want to be a part of this whole thing." So what I'm trying to say is, this young man is thinking ahead in the future so he can be better and better.