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NIT SEASON TIP-OFF

November 22, 2006

Bruce Pearl

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

BRUCE PEARL: We're a young basketball team and we really played like it tonight. I thought defensively we really did a good job against Butler, holding them down to 56 points and the percentages they shot. I think the kids paid pretty close attention to how to guard them and things to do, but at the same time offensively, we really struggled. We were accountable, we had a lot of good looks that we didn't finish around the basket. And obviously the shooting percentages both from the field and from the free throw line are an indication of Butler playing really physical and playing great defense, and our guys just not making the plays.

Q. Was it just one of those nights you guys couldn't just buy a shot in the second half, or was it their defense, a combination, but all the good looks and rimming out?
BRUCE PEARL: We were swimming uphill it seemed like offensively. Lost confidence in our continuity and didn't react and respond to some of the things Butler was doing defensively, didn't go with our counter, stayed with our primary and forced our primary. That's why I give Butler credit for their defense and our poor execution.

Q. I know you were pleased with the defense in the first half, but do you feel like when the offense wasn't there in the second half, it affected the defense?
BRUCE PEARL: You know, it wasn't our defense in the second half that cost us the game. We lost -- we lost some shooters that they made four threes in the second half and Betko, he made some big shots for them. But they do some good things to get him open looks and they got them.

Q. Catch you on the turnovers? Again, is that just growing pains?
BRUCE PEARL: We've got, with the exception of maybe Chris Lofton, we've got a roomful of guys that are playing in a completely different role than they did last year. Bradshaw, Smith, Childress and Howell are all playing a different role than they did last year with, some mixed results.
And then of course, all the new guys. So we had 15 turnovers from Ramar, Chris, and JaJuan. It's too much.

Q. Chris obviously got in foul trouble early on and they made that nice rub in the first half to take the lead in the game and you couldn't add to it because you turned it over eight times in the last five minutes and let Butler get back into it?
BRUCE PEARL: That's exactly what it was, and we've done that all year, get a lead and then give it back with our turnovers, exactly, sloppy and bad -- not good execution.

Q. You mentioned yesterday you knew they were going to be physical, is there anything else that surprised you about Butler?
BRUCE PEARL: No, and I don't think they were any more physical than I thought they would be. I don't think that, you know -- I don't think their physicality bothered us any more than I thought it would.

Q. Bad for the guys to get embarrassed or hard lesson learned?
BRUCE PEARL: I don't know if we got embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed. We got beat by a good basketball team. A team that beat Indiana and Notre Dame already -- we didn't play well. When we don't play well, I'm not embarrassed by that. I would like to have executed better. I would have liked to have won the game.

Q. What do you work on tomorrow, what do you tell the guys after a loss like that to keep them up?
BRUCE PEARL: What we have now, we're going to be playing a Final Four caliber team on Friday. And I knew we were, I just wanted to play them at 7:00 instead of 4:30. So, I mean, it's a completely different -- a completely different opponent.
You know, we're disappointed in the loss. We say that we beat people we're supposed to beat, and we didn't tonight. In spite of all of our challenges, we were supposed to beat Butler. But I'm not embarrassed that we didn't.
We've got a monumental task Friday.

End of FastScripts

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