BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 4, 1998

Leonard Hamilton

COACH HAMILTON: Today's game was kind of typical of how we've been playing probably the last month or so. And I was just listening to the tail end of John's interview. They have had adversity, and we had some. We had to deal with it. They had a couple of guys step up, and we have not been able to find that rhythm. We have kind of won a game, lost a game, won a game, lost a game, but we were never able to regain that fire that we showed back in December and January. You got to give Georgetown a lot of credit. I thought they kept changing their defenses. And as they did that, it caused us to be somewhat indecisive. And we didn't have that guy step up and make the big difference like I thought Boubacar and Shernard did. I thought we were battling pretty good on the boards. But it seemed as though they came away with all the important rebounds. There are so many things that happened during the course of the game; the technical foul that we got, the ball that went into Bland at the end and he turned the ball over. And our inability to handle their pressure. I think we had three straight turnovers, which, to be honest, this is the first time that we have had difficulty handling the pressure. This is was, I think, a very sound game plan on Georgetown's part, and it got the game in a very slow pace, and we never seemed to recover from it.

COACH HAMILTON: Well, when you look at where we are, we have lost coming into the tournament. We had lost 8 games. And I believe we have four teams that have lost 8 to 7 games, is that correct, overall?

COACH HAMILTON: And we finished what, 11 and 7? West Virginia finished 11 and 7. Did somebody finish 12 and 6?

COACH HAMILTON: So, we are talking about one game difference between three teams. We came in, we lost 8 games total. The other teams had lost 7 games total. The four teams ahead of us have played a minimum of 3 games more than we did because they went to preseason tournaments and we didn't. The percentage of victories should have been real close. Now, I don't know what that means, but I think it is fair to say that, you know, we lost 7 games, someone else lost 7 games, someone lost 6 games in the league, that means we are very close. How that that can be interpreted, I have absolutely no idea. I think we are close. I am not going to try and speculate because I don't totally understand the formula. I have done a pretty good job of kind of tuning it out. I am probably thinking about it a little bit more than I was before I got here, because I felt that we played our way into the tournament and unfortunately we didn't win.

COACH HAMILTON: Did you see it?

COACH HAMILTON: What happened?

COACH HAMILTON: Who?

COACH HAMILTON: What did he do?

COACH HAMILTON: How many times have you seen a player touch the back of an official?

COACH HAMILTON: All I said is I have seen a lot of kids touch officials on the back to try to get his attention, and at the most I have ever seen has been a warning. Now, you can make your own judgment. I am not going to comment on the official. I will say this, I thought maybe the call deserved a warning. If that is something, if that, because if that is what is within the rules, but from where I was sitting, it didn't appear that it was anything other than what I have seen hundreds of times. And I got to watch it on the replay in order to clarify that. But, that was a critical play during the game. Unfortunately, it happened, but there is no way I can go back and say that was the reason we lost the game because there were a lot of things we did not do very well during the course of the game that speaks louder in volumes than that one particular play. It did hurt us, but sometime I --

COACH HAMILTON: Once again, I don't remember all the circumstances surrounding it. I know that it was a setback. It was unfortunate and obviously the official felt that whatever the young man did, warranted it. I have just never seen that call -- I have never seen that play called that way.

COACH HAMILTON: Once again, Mario did particularly play a lot better in the first half - just one of those games where it wasn't his day. I mean, he got the quick foul early and then he got a second foul that was -- I thought was an unnecessary foul. We didn't particularly need him to get the one the first play. The second shot, he tried to block in transition. Then I have Kevin with two fouls and I have Mario with two fouls and I have Tim with two fouls. It is kind of hard to play all three of them at the same time when the score is that close. I feel fortunate that we were able to come -- able to come out the second half with only one of them being -- having a third foul. But unfortunately that little play there at the end where he couldn't stop and ran over the guy and got the foul and got hit in the head, that is kind of the way our day went.

COACH HAMILTON: Once again, I really think that any time you go through a season where you have a rash of injuries, or you have a rash of other types of situations -- adverse situations that come up that you have to deal with that even though it affects you in a negative way that there is opportunity for growth and learning and maturing as a result of dealing with those types of situations. Now, I think people who saw us play early in the year could very easily have predicted that we were a team that looked like it was headed for the Final Four. I mean, not the Final Four, but the NCAA tournament. What has happened is that we had to deal with a lot of things. I think we have learned and grown from that. But we put ourselves in that position. Any time you put yourself in the position where people have to make decisions, whether or not you are going to make the NCAA tournament, then you are not in position to complain or whine or even comment on it because we were our own worst enemy. We were a top 64 team we know that, and you know, for the majority of the year. We have not regained our rhythm and it is unfortunate and the positive thing about Georgetown they had a kid like Long that stepped up, we just didn't have anybody to step up and make the same type of contribution. Obviously that really made a difference down the stretch or else we wouldn't be sitting here having a conversation about this.

COACH HAMILTON: I think Georgetown is a good basketball team and they have knocked a lot of people out of this tournament. Unfortunately we have been the team that has played them several times. They basically, even though many of the games have been very, very close, they have gotten the best of us in the situation. We have done fairly well the last two or three years in the regular season so we have no reason to feel that this is a team that we can't compete against. They have played well in the tournament. They have played better than we have in the tournament. They probably have deserved to win the game. They certainly deserve to win the game because they had two guys step up and we didn't have an answer defensively to stop those two guys today.