BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 11, 2005

Randy Foye

Allan Ray

Jay Wright

COACH JAY WRIGHT: That was a great college basketball game, one that is difficult to take, but we have to, that's part of life. We're going to move on and give West Virginia credit. I thought they played a great game, didn't surprise us at all. This is the last part of our postseason. We want to learn from this and move on and win the next tournament. That's what's on our minds now.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: Just losing the semifinals. We came here, it was our goal to win the BIG EAST Championship. You know, there's nothing wrong with failing. I'm proud of our guys' effort, but it just hurts. It's life. We just got to take it and move on.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: We just didn't do a good enough job taking away their threes. We knew we had to do it. Give them credit. They know we're trying to take them away, we try to take them away; we didn't do it. They hit big-time threes. When they do that, they are very, very difficult to beat. Pittsnogle picked up one off the floor, loose ball, and hit one. You have to give them credit. I'm proud of our guys. Our guys gave great effort. Like you said, the fact that we turned the ball over 20 times, I'd say we didn't execute. You have to give them credit.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: You know what, from where I was, I couldn't see it. We will take that, we'll just take the call and move on.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: I don't know. I don't look at it that way, honestly. I feel more for our guys, you know. I've been doing this 22, 23 years, I've had a lot; I can't remember them all. These guys only have a few opportunities to do this. They gave great effort tonight. I just feel for them. But I also want them, as young men, to take it and move on, and we got another tournament to play. We're fired up to play in the NCAA tournament.

ALLAN RAY: He grabbed the rebound and he kind of out -- he kind of jumped up before me. I couldn't get there right away. My hand got caught up in his arm as he went up, and the ref called the foul.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: I thought we had a couple of possessions that -- I thought actually earlier I thought we started off well. Then there was a little lull that we had a 10-point lead. We just had some poor possessions where they got it going. Some of it, you know, might have been some mistakes on our part, but some of them were -- one shot hit the top of the backboard and went in. It was just one of those nights. It was Allan on Gansey on that play. Hit the top of the backboard, bounced back in. You just got to say -- but then once a team like that gets it going, it's tough to stop those threes.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: Yeah. They're a physical team. You don't play in this league without being physical. They did a great job, I thought, of riding us off our drives when we took it to the basket, just bodying up. I give them credit. We do like to get to the line more.

RANDY FOYE: The intensity was where we wanted it. We was just a step late on a lot of those plays. West Virginia is a great offensive team, and they made great plays and they scored off of them.

RANDY FOYE: We really didn't look at it like that. We looked at it like we had to play together, get stops as a team before we could make a play on offense.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: I thought they just -- they spread the floor a little bit better. I thought actually we had them. I thought we did a good -- I thought we did a very good job against, you know -- there's things, little things that happened in the game. I really look at this as a game that sometimes you do everything you're supposed to do, and things just don't go your way, you know. I think anybody that knows our team, I'll take responsibility that our guys didn't get it done when we didn't get it done, but I thought there were a lot of times where we did a great job, they were hesitant, maybe we could have had a turnover, we didn't get it. I just think -- I thought we did a good job. You got to give them credit for making the plays, you know.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: Yeah, we had a little -- I said that was that little run they made, you know. We just had -- might have been like a two-and-a-half-minute period there where I wasn't happy with the effort, but then they came right back, you know. Sometimes West Virginia can do that to you, they can kind of lull you to sleep. It wasn't as much I was mad at our guys' efforts, I was mad at we were letting them lull us to sleep, standing around instead of being aggressive. I thought from that point we did a good job. They got it going. They started hitting some threes. You can't let a team like that get going. They had eight threes in the first half.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: I think that this is what I really love about this team, is that we've been able to do that for a few years. Actually, we used to lose a lot of these games. We practiced coming back from these games. But we haven't lost a lot of these this year. But I think we do know how to respond. That's why I said this is going to hurt, this is going to hurt tonight. But tomorrow, we're going to be fired up about playing in the NCAA tournament, and I know these guys will respond.

RANDY FOYE: We're going to rebound. We're not going to let this loss get us down. We're going to keep our heads up, look for the next day of practice and focus on the next team that we're going to face in the NCAA tournament.

COACH JAY WRIGHT: Thanks, guys.