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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: WASHINGTON, D.C.March 22, 2008Keaton GrantChris KramerMatt PainterWASHINGTON, D.C. COACH PAINTER: First of all, I thought our guys gave a good effort tonight. Probably I think the silver lining of the game -- we had some shots not go down that we feel that we could normally make, but a lot of that has to do with Xavier's defense. They were very good. We just gave them too many and one plays. It seemed like they had seven or eight, I don't know how many they had. But they had too many opportunities where they were getting the ball in the post, making fouls, making baskets and making the free throws. We cannot put them on the free throw line. They were able to get to the free throw line and make the free throws and make a lot of those and ones. I thought that was the key to the game. At times we simply couldn't stop them. Q. For both of you guys, you're down ten, you make an 11-0 run and looked like you seized the momentum. And they answered with an and one. Did their experience show in the last five minutes? KEATON GRANT: Definitely the experience showed, if I compared to any team I would have to say Florida, they didn't get rattled. They didn't get frustrated. They stayed poised and you could see the experience on their part. CHRIS KRAMER: You know, their team has great togetherness. They really stayed together. Their experience really showed. They really stayed together and just kept on doing what they do. They kept on trying to make plays, and that's what they did down the stretch. Q. Both of you, you guys got off to a great start and really you were knocking them down. You hit some shots. Did you just feel that when they made that one run to get back in the game, how key was that point there in the first half when you had like a ten point lead? KEATON GRANT: Well, pretty much every team is going to make a run. We knew they were going to make a run. They made a run to get back in the game. We knew that they were going to make a run. We had to counter it and make our own run back. CHRIS KRAMER: It's a game of runs. We came out and we punched them in the mouth first. They came back and they punched us. Then we just seesawed for an while. They took the momentum going into halftime, when Drew Lavender had that three, it was just they went into halftime with a three point lead. Q. Is it hard to take any satisfaction about how your season went right now or is that something in the next week, few weeks, that you'll realize? CHRIS KRAMER: You know, we did have a great season. Anytime your a competitor and you're used to winning like we have been this season, you want to try to extend your season as far as possible. I feel bad for Tarrance, it was his last game. We feel like we were in a great position, we had a real chance to win, advance. This is the last time to put on that uniform. I really feel bad for him. KEATON GRANT: Same thing as Chris said. We had a good season. We had our ups and downs, we fought through it. It just shows the character of our team that we don't wilt under pressure. We could have wilted at times during the season. We didn't give up or anything like that, we kept fighting and we look forward to next season. Q. Chris, you guys have prided yourself on defense all year long. When you took the one point lead I think they scored on three straight possessions, can you talk about what you thought their defense was? CHRIS KRAMER: They're so balanced. They're hard to defend. And Josh Duncan being able to do the things that he can do as a four or five, puts some teams in a bind. We tried some different things tonight. Some of them worked better than others. It's a game of adjustments. But when you have so many shooters and so many guys to make plays it's kind of hard. When they went on that big run, it's just their poise and their togetherness and experience that came out. We just had to come back together and try to follow back with another run of our own. Q. Keaton, you guys in the last few games you played some very, very athletic teams. I think you talked about it after the Michigan game, you have to shore up your defense going into the tournament. Is that going to be a priority along with improving your rebounding? KEATON GRANT: That's the No. 1 priority. Looking forward to next season, first day of practice, all defense, no offense. That's always the thing with Purdue, we're going to always play defense. I think we're going to be even better just because we know the freshmen have been through it, they know what to expect, they know what our tendencies are, what we're supposed to do. We'll be better next year. Q. I think you mentioned the and ones that they got, they were able to take the ball to the goal. You talked about how Hummel was a difficult match-up for a lot of teams this year for the opponent. Did Xavier have some real hard match-ups for you? COACH PAINTER: I didn't think the and ones were the reason for the match-ups. I thought our guys didn't do a good job of taking their body there. At times when you're behind plays you have to get people to score over you, not allow them to have angles. I thought our guys reached at the end. It was too much reaching, whether it was off an offensive rebound or off a drive or off a post up. The play that C.J. Anderson made, we're doubling the post, and then allow him to come out of the post and we smack him and he scores it. And that was after the 11-0 run. Things of that nature happened all night. You can't play this game reaching all the time. You have to play with your feet and you have to play good position defense. And tonight we didn't do a good job of that. Q. When you look at Xavier do you see your team one year, two years down the road? COACH PAINTER: Not really, to be honest with you. Hopefully our bodies are like that. And that's something, if you just walk out and you see it. The thing I would say with our guys, we got knocked around a little bit in terms of coming off screens, defending some screens, moving offensively. But we out-rebounded them by three, and I thought that was great. If you told me before the game, I would take that any day of the week. They're a very good team. They have a lot of balance. I think we have some different pieces than they have. One thing we'd like to take from Xavier and hopefully we can be there in a year or two is just have a more physical approach and play more physical, especially on our interior. Q. You talk about physicality. Do you think Robbie Hummel's struggles came from that, getting pushed around tonight? COACH PAINTER: Not really. If you look at his lines in terms of what he does, he has nine rebounds, the most offensive rebounds in the game. He missed some open shots. When you miss some open shots or you miss some 3's, now the ability to drive is probably not going to be there as much for him. But I just thought it was one of those games where the ball just didn't go down for him. You just move on, that's part of the game sometimes. Q. You talk about physically getting bigger, what do you do with JaJuan, do you sit him down at a buffet table and not let him get up for a few years? What's the plan with him? COACH PAINTER: He has to continue to get better and work. A big part of his development is on the physical side. We will work with him in terms of strength training and getting better. He's not the only guy. I think we have a lot of guys that need to get bigger, stronger, quicker. But it's definitely first on our priority list for the spring and the summer is to get in that weight room. We do, anyways. But it is difficult during the season to gain strength. You're just trying to maintain, so it is tough. Q. As long as we're talking about strength, here. I think you guys got 18 offensive rebounds, and a lot of those offensive rebounds were under the basket or tips or whatnot. I think you only had 7 second chance points, do those things correlate with it? COACH PAINTER: A couple of times we rushed it, so it wasn't a physical play. I don't know why they didn't gather themselves and just go strong with the basketball, but they didn't. You have to applaud their effort for getting a 13 offensive rebounds. They did a good job of crashing. You have to collect yourself and be able to go above somebody and score the basketball. Sometimes guys that get that rebound need angles. When you jam offensive rebounders, sometimes it's tough to score over them. It depends on who gets the rebound. I thought our guys did a good job of crashing and giving the effort, we have to do a better job of finishing. Q. How much did it hurt you guys when Kramer fouled out? COACH PAINTER: Obviously it hurts us, especially on the defensive end. You'd like to have him out there. I think he's a guy that makes plays. He doesn't always make baskets. He gets loose balls and is very important to have him. Not having him out there I think you just don't know, because he does so many intangibles. When you take your leading scorer out that averages 18, automatically you say you take 18 points out of the lineup. He takes a lot of positives out of our lineup in a different way. There's no doubt we're a better team when he's on the floor. Q. Chris mentioned you guys made some defensive adjustments, can you talk about that a little bit? COACH PAINTER: We're stuck with Josh Duncan to be honest with you, with our two bigs. And when we play Rob and Scott together, we put Marcus Green at the 4 with it. We can switch all those ball screens. Neman and J.J. just can't switch onto Drew Lavender, it's not going to work. He's going to get by them every time. Rob and Scott can do a pretty good job of leveling them off and switching that. You go back and forth. As a coach you'd like to keep bigger guys in there with Jason Love and Josh Duncan and Derrick Brown to help you on your front line, but it's probably not the best thing for you with the pick special pop action. You see a couple of times we tried to scissor out and he made a couple of baskets, we said to hell with it and went small and switched it all out. I think that helped us in terms of the pick and pop action, but now it opens up another can of worms with Drew using his dribble and doing some different things. So now you're stuck there. So it's a hell of a profession. End of FastScripts |
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