BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 4, 1998

Tommy Amaker

COACH AMAKER: First of all, I just want to say congratulations to Boston College. I thought it was a tremendous game, and I thought it went back and forth throughout the whole ballgame. You could see the determination on both team's part to try to win this game. I am disappointed, obviously, for our team. And we just could not seem to come up with enough stops against Maglos and Granger; especially Maglos, especially when Granger was in foul trouble, you could see it posed a difficult task for a team with an inside and outside type of scoring threat. Very tough team for us for some reason to defend. We haven't found an answer for that yet. But, I think they are a very good team. They are experienced, and I think they have an opportunity to do a lot of damage in this tournament. You could see that they seem to like playing in this building, in this arena. Probably a few of them winning the championship a year ago have some fond memories, so... I think Al has done a great job. I think they deserve to win the game. I thought they outplayed us and deserve to win.

COACH AMAKER: I thought it was a valiant effort by him to be able to come back and play. I think it scared him, the injury with his knee probably buckled or twisted. He wears a brace on that one that he had a problem with. I think it scared him actually because he came back and was able to play again. That gave us a boost; that gave us a shot in the arm. I thought we took the lead at that point we kind of went off of some maybe adrenaline or something, you know, to take over some momentum at that point in the game when he got hurt. I thought our guys got a big lift in terms of trying to really banned together without one of our key players. Certainly having him back was a relief because we didn't know how serious the injury was while we were sitting on the bench and to have him back knowing he is okay and healthy is the main thing.

COACH AMAKER: I hope it does. As I said, they are a tough team for us. Sometimes when you match up with a team or sometimes a team just seems to be, for whatever reason it may be a tough, tough team to match up with and that seems to be the case. I am hoping that we can always learn from any situation. We try to learn from wins. We try to learn from losses; try to get some experience in situations. For us to drop this game in overtime, we fought hard to get it to overtime. We kind of -- they really extended it, went for it and got the lead and took it away from us. But I think we can use it. I think we can learn -- I thought the first half in terms of intensity, we needed to get better at that. I didn't think we had that in the first half. I thought we got better in the second half. Then Holloway got hurt; it disjointed us somewhat. If we can use it in a positive way in learning how to play in a tournament, hopefully that is something we can use down the road.

COACH AMAKER: Well, it is tough. I think sometimes because, you know, Donnell is more of a perimeter player and they were really kind of showing or shedding out on him in terms of trying to make sure that they are guarding him out from the 3-point line and further out. Sometimes you can throw it in the post to Maglos, you are closer to the basket, you can make things happen, you can draw the fouls. I thought he did a great job off that. We did not -- I don't think we executed that well offensively and Donnell missed some shots late but he carried us for so long. I thought their defense was good. They did a nice job of not allowing to us get the open looks that we were hoping to get.

COACH AMAKER: We are hoping it is not. We are hoping we will get an opportunity to play some basketball this season. It is not up to us. We were hoping to try to control the things that we had a chance to control which was an opportunity to win tonight and that didn't happen. So now we are just waiting to see what is going to happen. That is the position we are in. We felt like we have had a decent year, a team worthy of consideration. There are a lot of team who are worthy of that in terms of a post-season birth.