BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 11, 2005

Josh Boone

Jim Calhoun

Charlie Villanueva

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, first thing, congratulations to Syracuse. We've played them twice this year. Both those occasions, we were able to eventually physically dominate them inside. Lost Saturday night in Hartford, Gampel Pavilion. We did a tremendous job, won by 18 points, dominated them again. And they turned the tide on us tonight. Physically dominated us in every aspect of the game. And then with about 10 minutes to go, we played basketball finally, after two nights of not playing basketball, and we had built ourselves such an obstacle that we needed every call, break, ball to go in, all the kind of things you need in that kind of comeback, and we'd come up a bit short. I couldn't be more disappointed to have it happen at this time of year - not to get beat, no one wants to get beat in a tournament and go home. But our performance was not very good. I said that last night. I thought in the first 30 minutes, I thought we were just overwhelmed by Syracuse and didn't respond the way we needed to respond. If that happens next week, you know, it doesn't necessarily -- isn't really what we obviously want. Nothing we can do about it now except go home, regroup. One thing I will say is that Denham Brown, as you know, was hurt last night. That's why he only played 14 minutes tonight. Clearly, it would have been foolish with next week coming up to push him any more. He couldn't move laterally. He's been, I think, our glue. But it wasn't Denham Brown. We got our butts kicked inside early. You can take your stats sheet and rip it up as far as rebounds go; they don't mean anything. That means with 10 minutes to go we were embarrassed, and we responded as good athletes and prideful kids will and made a comeback and actually probably could have -- would have had a chance with 2 minutes and 12 seconds to go down 6 for the game, but made a couple mental mistakes and wasn't able to overcome a big obstacle we set up. But congratulations to Syracuse, they were a good team. We weren't such a good team tonight for 30 minutes. Last 10 I thought we played with some passion.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: We were worse. Zone had nothing to do with it. What had to do with it was they kept getting offensive rebounds and building the lead up, and then we, in turn, reverted to probably a month and a half ago of just taking bad shots and not -- no crisp movement, no penetration. Our big guys just sat back on the baseline and didn't flash hard to the middle. Once again, matter of fact, I think the zone extended even more, the middle was even more wide open, because for whatever reason, it was more wide open and we did not take advantage of it when we got inside. And in fairness to the big guys, we didn't get the ball inside the way we should have when they flashed, but they didn't flash near enough. So like everything else, it was a combination between the both. So, no, do I think they played the zone better? No. I thought we did a good job on McNamara. I do continue to say that post-up play should be called not just for one player but for all players the same way, and that's the second game in a row that an individual is outshooting more shots than we get. I think post-up should go fair. But regardless of that they physically handled us and we didn't respond. So when we got the ball inside, they just -- our guys just didn't go strong to the hole, nor did they get good passing, good position, nor did we act when we got trapped, all that kind of thing. I thought it was more us. It always has to be given credit to the other team. They certainly did, without question, Syracuse did a good job.

CHARLIE VILLANUEVA: One thing, we still had faith, you know, still had faith in one another. We dug ourselves into a hole, we tried to get out of it. Fell a little bit too short. But the only positive thing you can get out of this is we never gave up.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: One other thing I didn't mention, we were 7-for-18 from the foul-line. Coming down the stretch, a couple of those foul shots would have made it a one-possession game, and it would have been a lot more interesting. So I agree with Charlie, but I don't expect this team to give up. This is a great group of kids. It's been a tremendous basketball team, in my opinion, one of the top 10, 15 teams in the country. They didn't play like that tonight. Nor did they quite frankly play like that the end of the game last night, so that's a disappointment I have. But I would never expect this team to just let it happen to them. They responded like I expected them to. But I was shocked by the fact that we let ourselves get down 22, 23 points.