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March 14, 2008
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
Q. You played that 2-3 zone against UCONN so well. I know Roy Hibbert isn't necessarily the same player that Hasheem Thabeet is, especially on offense, but why didn't you guys go to that at all today?
COACH HUGGINS: We did.
Q. Why not so often? Why not the whole game?
COACH HUGGINS: Because they made three threes in a row. They made three threes in a row, and we had to get out of it. And at our place we guarded them man and held them to 50-some points. So I think the whole staff, and the players wanted to play man.
Q. After Hibbert was held to nothing yesterday, were you expecting a game like this out of him?
COACH HUGGINS: He's a really good player. I don't know really what I was expecting. I was expecting us to guard him a little better than what he we did, but he had a heck of a game. He played very well. He played aggressively.
Q. With the UCONN win yesterday, do you think with all the momentum behind that win, do you think that affected your guys? Did you see any fatigue on the part of certain players?
COACH HUGGINS: We practice three hours a day every day. Every day. We never go less than three hours. We shouldn't be fatigued. I don't think we were fatigued. We didn't necessarily get bagged, but I don't think it was fatigue. We didn't get back early in the game. If you're that fatigued early in the game, we probably should have just called it off, and say we're just too tired to play.
We did a better job in transition later when we should have been tired than what we did early.
Q. Joe, Coach Thompson just said that you simply were not making shots that you had made earlier. Is that what you felt? It was an off-night or were they doing something to mess with you?
JOE ALEXANDER: It was definitely both. I wasn't making shots that I've normally been making lately. But it was due to stuff they were doing differently. They were having guys from the weak side coming and helping me when I was driving, sometimes doubling in the post. So they did a good job.
Q. You were outrebounded 40-22, any reason you can put your finger on why? Lack of effort, or just they're that good?
COACH HUGGINS: Well, first of all, they're pretty good. They were 15-3 in this league, and this is the best league in this country. They're pretty good. That's the biggest reason is because they're pretty good. You know, it's hard for us to match up with a guy like Hibbert. What did he have, 13 of them? It's hard for us.
And then we kind of -- they forced us to, I think, probably help too much on him, and then it opened things up and then they beat us in transition.
They're good. I mean, it was a whole lot more them than it was us. I mean, they're just good.
Q. Could you talk about Joe Alexander's development this season, and the progress that he's been making, and why he's making progress.
COACH HUGGINS: He's made the progress because he wants to. I've never had a great player that didn't want to be great. Joe puts the time in. Joe works at it. You know, Joe's listened to what we've asked him to do. You know, we were just walking down the hall. We were talking about one of the guys that I had before and kind of how he is, and how he works. And this guy's going to be successful because he'll put the time in, he'll work at it, and he'll listen. He'll do what he's asked to do.
Q. After when you guys got it down to four after Ruoff's technical free throws, the drought kind of came. During that time period, how many different things did you try, different combination, rotations? Was there a lot of things that you tried?
COACH HUGGINS: I think during that time I think it was either Alex or Darris (Nichols) asked out. They were tired. And we subbed. If I remember correctly, when it was four they threw it in the post against Mazzulla, and Joe tried to take a charge, and it ended up being a three-point play which took it back to 7, and we had a miss and they came back to hit another three, and all of a sudden it's 10 again. That's what good teams do.
Q. After Smalligan's foul trouble you had to try to guard Hibbert. How hard is it to give away six inches like that to guard a player that big?
JOE ALEXANDER: It's just not something that you're used to, I think. After playing them once or twice you could probably do a better job on him. But it's just so different than anything I'd had to do before.
Q. Bob, how much did you hate that match-up?
COACH HUGGINS: They just got us more spread than what they got us before. You know, when you let him catch it, and bounce it a couple of times into the lane, he's going to throw that hook. We just couldn't get help to him. Didn't or couldn't. We let him catch it too deep. We didn't let him catch it that deep. And Jamie got in foul trouble early. I thought Jamie did a pretty good job early and then got in foul trouble.
Q. Despite the loss tonight, your team has obviously played pretty well during the stretch. Does that give you a lot of hope for the tournament?
COACH HUGGINS: We're going to be fine. We're very young. That's what I think people don't realize. We've got two seniors and two juniors and the rest of our guys are sophomores, red shirt freshmen or freshmen. And we have intensity, I think, and I think young guys do. You maybe get satisfied sometimes when you really don't deserve to be satisfied. And we just don't, you know, we can't go very deep on the bench.
We'll have a day between, a day between to one prepare. We'll win our first round game, and that day between to kind of regroup and keep guys a little fresher than probably what they were. He played 40 minutes and 39 minutes in two games prior. Darris played about the same. It's probably easier for Joe to play, turn around and play 40 again and it is Darris, just because of his body type.
End of FastScripts
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