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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: OMAHAMarch 20, 2008Ken BoneJeremiah DominguezDeonte HuffOMAHA, NEBRASKA THE MODERATOR: We'll ask Coach to open with a opening statement, then go to the student athletes. COACH BONE: I don't think it's any secret Kansas is a great basketball club. They showed it today, how strong they are in a lot of different areas, and we tried to stop them a few different ways, but we struggled in almost every one of those areas. We tried to stop the inside the first half and give up the 3, see if they could miss some 3s, but they shot 8 for 13 and yet they got the ball on the inside and were effective there. On the other hand, I am proud of our kids. I thought they played as hard as they could and did the best they could. In that sense, I'm extremely proud of Portland State. Q. How close was that to the best game you guys could give Kansas? DEONTE HUFF: Well, I thought we could have done a lot of things better, rebounding and taking care of the ball. But Kansas is a good team, they're big athletic and strong. They made it hard for us to do a lot of those things. But I feel like we gave it a good effort. We could have did a little bit better, but I'm proud of my team and Kansas is a great team, so you gotta give it up to them. JEREMIAH DOMINGUEZ: I just think our team did good on the areas that we tried to, but, I mean, we don't play teams like Kansas every day. We don't get that experience. Some of the guys take it -- I mean, we don't see those kind of athletes in our league. It was kind of a surprise and it was hard for us to get rebounds in some areas. And I think we did a good job of what we had and we fought today, and so I'm proud. Q. You only shot 38 percent this morning. Can you talk about how their length and their size kind of affected your shot throughout the game? JEREMIAH DOMINGUEZ: I mean, they're long, athletic, they change every shot. They're always there when you shoot. I mean, their defense is good. They don't really make any mistakes to get open shots. So I think their hands are always being in our face kind of changed their shots a little bit. DEONTE HUFF: What Jeremiah said, seemed like they were always there. Even if you beat one guy, another guy was there. So, yeah, they had great defense. You know, they're bigger than us, so it was hard -- yeah, they definitely changed every shot. It was hard to shoot over them. It made it difficult for us to shoot like we regularly do. Q. What was it like to have the small crowd you did of Portland State fans that was there? DEONTE HUFF: It was great. You know it was fun to have supporters and I'm pretty sure it was fun for them to come. And definitely appreciate them coming, so to have somebody here for us, considering there were mostly Kansas fans, to have that little section, we definitely appreciated it. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We'll stay with the coach for a while. Thank you for your time. Q. What do you think it's going to take for a 16 seed to beat a 1 seed? COACH BONE: I think it's going to take a team that has -- we had a young man in our conference a year ago named Rodney Stuckey, he's with the Pistons now. I think in basketball you only go five on five, unlike a lot of sports. And I think with one guy that is really, really good, that can make a huge difference in a game like this, because you just milk it. I feel like we have a good team. Scott Morrison had a good year, Deonte Huff and Jeremiah Dominguez, but none of those three can take over a game like this for a period of time because what they mentioned as far as Kansas' athleticism and their length. That's number one. You need either a real special, special player, which very seldom do the 16 seeds, the conferences that the 16 seeds come out of, rarely do we have that type of player. Or, I think you have to have a certain system like maybe a Princeton system, or I know on the West Coast, UC Davis plays that way. If UC Davis were good enough to where they were in the NCAA tournament, they would be difficult to guard, even though Kansas is so good and No. 1 seeds are so good. I think a system like that could really hurt a No. 1 seed. Unfortunately, we don't have either. We have a lot of good players, but not, I don't think, an NBA player. Q. You opened the season with UCLA and you finished with Kansas. Can you say a little bit about what it means to your program to play these elite teams? COACH BONE: That's part of the college experience, I think. That's what every kid wants to be able to do, and obviously our kids were not able to play at that level, so we just scheduled that level. We didn't schedule this game, but we like to schedule -- last few years we've played Arkansas, Iowa state, Gonzaga a few times and Washington a few times and this year now UCLA and Washington State. We've played Oregon a couple of times. So it's what everybody wants to do, compete against the best. More often than not, they get the best of us, but we've won a couple of those games, so it's a great challenge. Q. In the timeout with two and a half minutes left in the game, what do you tell the team in the huddle? COACH BONE: Mainly just how proud I am. It's a long five months and we go through a lot. And there's a lot of up and downs, but at the very end I wanted them to know just how proud I was of what they've accomplished this year. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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