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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2008Joe AlexanderDa'Sean ButlerBob HugginsNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Q. Talk a little about your first time coaching in this tournament, and your general impression. COACH HUGGINS: Well, looking from the outside in before, you knew that it was such a class tournament, and class operation. And after last night's festivities and then coming in today, a lot of conference tournaments when you're playing at noon and 2:00 o'clock on the first day, there isn't anybody there. This is the way things are supposed to be done. Mike (Tranghese) and his staff do an incredible job. Q. Their zone and their switches really confused your offense. COACH HUGGINS: Yeah, they did a really good job. But, you know, we made some shots early. We had all kinds of opportunities early and couldn't make a shot. That zone gets a whole lot better when you don't make perimeter shots. The team did a great job. Did a great job with the defense, and, you know, they followed some guys through, didn't follow some other guys through. But you look back at the beginning, we had all kinds of opportunities. Alex had shots that he normally makes. I think he was 0 for 6 to start the game. Q. Da'Sean, could you talk about what kind of things were running through your mind in the final minutes of the game. You had a lot of tough rebounds down the stretch. DA'SEAN BUTLER: Basically I was just trying to get inside, get rebounds, help my team the best way I could. It was a very close game, and they were playing very hard. I just tried to do what my team needed me to do. Whatever we were lacking at the time I just tried to do. If it was defense or if it was rebounding or just making the extra pass. Just anything to help. That's all I was pretty much thinking about. Q. You really enjoyed the last few seconds of the game, it seemed like. DA'SEAN BUTLER: Exactly, time ran off the clock, and knowing we were up and we had everything under control was a good feeling. Especially we won our first game here in the tournament. I was just very excited. Q. What adjustments do you have to make for tomorrow's game against UCONN? COACH HUGGINS: They're good, and they're playing at a high level right now. We're going to go back and look at tapes since we've played them, and see if they've changed anything or made any adjustments. We played pretty well, actually, the first half there. We'd go in the locker room down 16 or 17 and came out second half and played a whole lot better. Actually kind of got back in the game. But we have to go look at tape and see. Q. Can you talk about your defense the whole night, but especially in the last five minutes, they had one field goal down the stretch. COACH HUGGINS: Well, we work so hard at it. You know, we were just trying to tell our guys we've worked this hard, let's just go get it stopped. Let's go do what we're supposed to do. I thought we made them take hard shots. They did a great job controlling tempo. But at the end, we were just going to switch ball screens and not switch anything else, and kind of try to stay with our man and guard. Q. Coach, what kind of trouble does McDermott playing the point give you? And it looked like you were trying to keep the ball out of his hands. COACH HUGGINS: No, we were just trying to make him run more clock after we got ahead. You know, it's hard when your power forward plays point. But we're fortunate because of this guy. You know, he can go out on the floor and guard. And Wellington can go out on the floor and guard. And Da had him some, and he can go on the floor and guard. I don't know if it affects us as much as it would affect other people, because we have guys very similar to what Geoff is. Q. Seems like lately with your scoring output you're garnering a lot more attention from the opposition. You were able to hit a lot of high-lows. Do you think that will continue the rest of the season, the high-lows? JOE ALEXANDER: Yeah, I think the high-lows will continue. It's a pretty easy shot for me. Even with more focus from the opposition. You know, on them guarding me on that shot, it's still easy for me to hit. Q. You're able to dump it down, too, right? JOE ALEXANDER: Yeah, that's one of the things. When my teammates know their man is coming over to help out on that, they make the adjustments and get open. Q. Last time you played UCONN they couldn't handle you and everything, was that because you guys were running such a good offense, got the shots you wanted or did you just have a great night? JOE ALEXANDER: I think it's a little bit of both. Obviously, our offense gave them trouble, and, obviously, I was shooting well that night. Q. Looked like they didn't have a defensive answer for you. JOE ALEXANDER: Yeah, I don't know (smiling). Q. You felt all along you were an NCAA Tournament team. You follow the losses with some of these other conferences, does this eliminate any doubt that you're not in your mind? COACH HUGGINS: I don't know how any team that wins 11 games in this league is not an NCAA Tournament team. If you're taking the best teams -- and I told Raf and Jay when they were in Morgantown for the Pitt game -- I was a mid-major coach. I was at Akron for five years and I know how hard it is. I know how hard those people work at it. But the reality is if it's the 34 best teams, put them in our league and see how many they win. This has got to be as hard a league as there is in the country. What makes it even harder is having 16 teams. So you prepare for 15 different styles of play throughout the season. There aren't any days off in this league. I think that's the difference. The difference is in a lot of those other leagues, you cannot come to play some days and because you're a little bit better, you can win. It's very, very difficult to do that in this league. Q. For tomorrow, are you going to look to increase the rebounding effort tomorrow? DA'SEAN BUTLER: Definitely. They're a very good rebounding team. We went there, and the end of the first half they were leading us in rebounds by about ten. We know how good a rebounding team they are. We're a very good rebounding team as well. Honestly, it's a matter of who wants it more. We've got to try to outwork them as we go to play. Q. Considering the challenges you faced when you took over this team at the beginning of the year, how pleased are you to be in a position, like you said, 11 Big East wins? A pretty sure shot at the NCAA Tournament. COACH HUGGINS: I'm not sure I had any challenges to be honest with you. They've been terrific. They're great to coach. They were, I think, very eager to play more man-to-man. I think they were excited about having a little bit more. We run an open post deal that there is a lot of freedom in, and I think they enjoyed that. I guess I'm one of those guys where it's half empty instead of half full. I look back at the Pitt loss, I look back at the Oklahoma loss, I look back at the Georgetown loss, I look back at the Tennessee loss and say what if? I mean, all of a sudden now we're 26 wins and we're probably ranked in the Top 10, well, we are ranked in the Top 10 in the country even if we win half of those, two of those four. But we're learning. People don't realize how young this team is. I think everybody sees Darris has been around forever, and takes care of the ball and doesn't throw it away. But the rest of these guys are young. Da'Sean is a veteran for us; he's a sophomore. Joe didn't play at all as a freshman, and, you know, played limited minutes at the end of last year. So I think we're getting better and better and better because these guys are getting playing time and they're getting experience. Our roster is full of freshman and sophomores. We have two seniors and two juniors. End of FastScripts |
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