	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 8, 2006

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

THE MODERATOR: Coach Louis Orr and Donald Copeland.
COACH LOUIS ORR: To God be the glory. I want to praise Him for just blessing us and keeping us and being such a good God to us. I thank Him for his grace and his mercy.
Hey, you know, it's awful hard to beat a team when it's tough to put the ball in the basket. I thought our defensive effort and our game plan against Rutgers, especially Quincy Douby, I thought we did a very good job getting the ball out of his hand. I thought we gave ourselves a chance. But, you know, it's tough when you shoot 25% for the game. You know, really, just it seemed like it was a lid on the basket. We got open looks, the ball wouldn't drop.
Donald was a soldier out there for us. He didn't quit. If it wasn't for him, we would have struggled even more. It was just a game where we didn't make shots. When you don't make shots, regardless of what the defense is like, it's going to be tough to win.
Q. Donald, can you tell me what you envision the next four days will be like up until the selection announcement? Are you concerned that what happened tonight will have a big impact on it?
DONALD COPELAND: No, we feel that we built a strong enough resume, you know, finishing top seven in our league. We got some key wins down the stretch and throughout the year.
So, you know, you can't let tonight take that away. We feel confident of what we've accomplished through the regular season.
Q. Is this particularly frustrating considering what you did at Pittsburgh?
COACH LOUIS ORR: You know, you got to look at the whole body of work. Each game stands on its own merits. Going to Pittsburgh and, you know, giving them their only loss of the year and coming off beating a Cincinnati team, a tough Cincinnati team, you know, we put two quality wins back-to-back at the end of the year. We're disappointed with the game tonight, but it doesn't, to me, deter the body of work that we put together. This is the toughest conference in America. Being 9-7, you know, finishing seventh, and also the road wins we got, our resume is definitely strong enough to get us into the NCAA tournament.
Q. It looked like your game plan was to shut Douby down. You doubled him every chance you got, but you let the rest of the Rutgers team beat you. Was that the game plan?
COACH LOUIS ORR: Not quite like that. We didn't want Douby to have a big game, but we also didn't want anyone else to have a big game. In reality, Farmer hit 14 and Webb 10. Defensively, considering we shot 25% from the floor, I thought we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. But the tough thing was just for us to be able to generate offense.
Donald was -- I mean, he scored more than half our points. It's hard for us, for any team to win, unless you get your top two or three scorers, if you can get them going and have big games. But we just didn't make enough shots.
Q. Seemed offensively you didn't flow. Can you figure out why that was?
COACH LOUIS ORR: Well, you know what, I think I give Rutgers some credit. They tried to make Kelly uncomfortable, doubling him. We've been sharing the basketball all year and Kelly has been getting doubled all year, so that wasn't anything new.
I just think, you know, you need to see the ball go in the basket in order to get a rhythm going. We had some wide open looks. Our perimeter guys, I mean, we were 7 for 27 from three. We're going to watch the tape. We got a lot of good looks. Again, nobody's trying to miss shots, but, you know, the ball just didn't drop.
Q. In terms of the other games, will you watch other tournaments and see how things work out? Will you micromanage this?
DONALD COPELAND: No, I mean, it's really out of my hands. It's not my job to watch anybody else. It's just about us getting back in the practice and working on what we need to work on. We're going to prepare for the NCAA tournament. Like I said before, I feel our resume is pretty strong. So regardless what happens in any other tournaments, I still feel pretty good about our chances making it.
Q. Coach, when you watch on Sunday, is it going to be an anxious time, or you're hoping to get in, or is it going to be you know you're in, it's just a matter of where you go?
COACH LOUIS ORR: I feel confident in what we've done. I'm going there with the anticipation to hear our name being called on Sunday. I'm a guy that does a lot of praying anyway, so I will continue to pray. I know God is a good God. He's got good things in store for this team. I'm going to keep the faith.
Based on what we've accomplished this year, without a doubt, you know, I'm confident in our resume to get in, you know. We just have to wait and see what happens on Sunday.
THE MODERATOR: Seton Hall, thank you.

End of FastScripts...

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297