BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 5, 1999

Leonard Hamilton

LEONARD HAMILTON: I thought St. John's did a very, very good job in the first half of mixing their defenses up early in the game, and finally got some kind of offense to reel them in and was able to tie the score. And to their credit, we expected this to be a typical St. John's game where they would go out and try to score 80 points like they normally have. But to their credit, they really slowed the tempo down and did a really nice job of executing and keeping their game at a pace that was -- I'm assuming was in their best advantage. The they worked an awful lot on defense and they kept us on defense and did a nice job of spreading the floor. And they made some plays at the end of the game that gave them a chance to win. I was so proud of our kids, though, because with four minutes and 50 seconds to go, we were down ten and we put ourselves back in a position where we had a chance to win the basketball game. And these kids have fought hard all year long, and the team that played the best today won. And I wanted to congratulate St. John's for doing a great job with their preparation. They made us work, but I am equally as proud of our kids because I believe this team has a lot more basketball in them.

LEONARD HAMILTON: I hear that cliche bounced around by different people. I mean, I don't think it's any more difficult to me to play a team three times, two, or one. A lot depends on the team. This is a good basketball team, and because the game could have gone either way, I think that bears up with that I'm saying is true. All three games have been very close. This game was not any different for the fact that they made some plays at the end and won the game. I'm not sure if we played them two or three more times it wouldn't be the same thing.

LEONARD HAMILTON: I think first thing we're going to do is evaluate the film and make sure we -- there were several things we probably could have done a little better defensively: Fight the post a little bit, maybe press the passers. I'm sure there will be a lot for us to learn. One thing that we will come away from this tournament realizing is that we're a pretty good basketball team and that we have a chance to -- to play a lot of basketball. And for us, we have so many hurdles to climb, just in terms of earning respect, building confidence and tradition. We have to feel good about ourselves. We're not going to hang our heads. We're going to go back home and take a day off and start getting ready for preparation for the NCAA tournament. It feels a lot better knowing that we're going than it did last year, sitting around anticipating.

LEONARD HAMILTON: I think they are very tough-minded kids that -- tonight I was mostly impressed with the way they executed their game plan. It was obvious that very few times did anybody break from what they had this their game plan. They showed a tremendous amount of discipline tonight and that's to their credit. A team that averages 80 points a game scored 26 points the first half, and those kids never got out of tempo of the game plan that Coach Jarvis had for them and that's to their credit. And any time a team can make that kind of adjustment and play that way for 40 minutes, you've got to give them credit, and they did a nice job.

LEONARD HAMILTON: I thought they slowed the tempo down and did a lot more ball screening and got the ball, to the post an awful lot more. They made an effort to post as many guys up as possible. I thought they did a fine job executing their offense, a lot better than they did last time. I thought their shot selection was very good. They fought the glass real well. I thought we might have out-rebounded them the last couple times and out-rebounded them, I believe, by two, and we were down. I think almost at one point in time we were down like ten rebounds in the second half. How we pulled it in, I don't know.

LEONARD HAMILTON: Happy?

LEONARD HAMILTON: Obviously, we feel better about ourselves this year because we haven't had any- distractions at all, and our kids feel that they just got beat tonight by a team that played better. So our confidence will be high. I think we have things in perspective. We real realize that when you go into the NCA Tournament, it's like being here: You're one and done. You have to go out and play smart, intelligent basketball.

LEONARD HAMILTON: Obviously, any time -- he played hard and gave us good effort and -- I don't use anything as an excuse. We just got beat by a team that played better. Tim played well and gave us a good effort, had 25 points, and if you can score 25 points and feel bad, then I hope he feels bad the rest of the way.

LEONARD HAMILTON: I don't think we used the bench very much, did we? I thought that Elton gave us good minutes. They played a small lineup most the time to Dwayne didn't have the opportunity to play as much. We felt that John Samuels was doing a pretty decent defensive job on Ocitti, and we wanted to keep Samuels on him. And Johnny has been so consistent all year, we felt we needed him in the game; so we just didn't use that much bench as we have in the past.

LEONARD HAMILTON: Eric is a great player. He made a couple steals and made a couple big-time plays, and good players will make great plays. And you have to give him credit for doing all the little things and keeping the team and the flow. Any time you have a pointguard just running the team the way the coach wants him to run it, you have to compliment him. He did a very good job tonight defensively. He didn't do as well as he would have liked to, but I thought he did a tremendous job running offense. Best I've seen.