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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2009Bobby GonzalezJeremy HazellNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Syracuse 89 COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: Just start with an opening statement. Our kids battled. We gave everything we had. You know, I'm proud of them. You know, there was some stretches in the game where the game got away from us. Syracuse is just a really, really talented team. They can hurt you a lot of ways. This shoot 3s, they can go inside. Their murder in transition and Jonny Flynn is almost unguardable. Paul Gause is about as good of a defender as you can get and we just didn't have any answers for Jonny Flynn. He got 15 in the first half. Big key I thought in the game was when the things got emotional, it hurt us more than it hurt them because they can absorb a couple technicals or a guy getting in foul trouble. We can't. John Garcia had four fouls with 16 minutes to go. That really hurt us. I think it was a two-point game at the time or something like that, so that hurt us and then they got hot and made shots. When they make shots they're a very, very, very good team. They're up there with the top four teams in this conference, in my opinion. Q. Bobby, considering they like to run so much, was it a tough matchup considering you guys having played and they were fresh? COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: When you play a team like Syracuse to get ready for their -- for their transition offense where they lead the league in scoring at 80 points a game you got to be rested, you got to have your time to work on your transition D. You got to have time to attack their zone. We literally didn't have barely anytime on getting ready for the zone because their length kind of shocks you. It's just a tough situation when -- it's not excusable when you play a game and play a team like Syracuse the next night when they haven't played. They're the kind of team you need some time to get ready for. You just don't have it in a tournament situation. That's why they're so good. Q. Bobby, after the double technicals right there, I think they went on 18-3 run, something like that. Why did they all of a sudden just capitalize off that? COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: Like I just said, one of the reasons was John Garcia got four fouls and out of the game. Without him inside, that's pretty much it for us and then I think they got momentum because they got the two shots, they got the ball, they -- they hit a three out of the timeout. They spurted and it hurt us, you know. You know, they capitalized on that run and, you know, we -- we didn't have a -- we didn't have a lot of things going for us and they had a lot of things clicking. Devendorf got hot, Jonny Flynn spectacular. Onuaku is a tough matchup inside. Q. Bobby, talk about your chances for NIT bid. I know you think you should get one. COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: I do. I guess a lot of it is going to come down to Selection Sunday as far as how many teams does the NCAA take from the Big East into the NCAA. You know, I hope they take at least eight. I think Providence deserves to get in. I know I'm not an expert. There's 18 million people out there talking about it but I'd like to see the 7 teams everybody has been talking about all year and Providence. If not, more than that but it sounds like Providence should get in. If they take 8 teams in the NCAA, maybe they'll take two, three in the NIT. They start taking two, three teams in the NIT, they got to start talking about Seton Hall because we beat Cincinnati, we beat Georgetown. Of course Notre Dame is going to be probably in the NIT. If not, I mean maybe go to the NCAA. I don't know. But so I think that we deserve it. We won 17 games. We weren't expected to do that this year. We won 8 league games this year in this league this year. Then we had two great out-of-conference victories, Virginia Tech and USC. We're a tough team that plays hard and I think we give everybody a run. And, you know, I hope that we make it. I'd like to continue to coach this team. Q. Bobby, if this was his last game, could you comment on Paul and he finished four steals behind the record. COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: It's another reason I want to extend the season, I would like to give him a chance at the record. I want to see if we can get to 18, 19 wins. It's the kind of -- Paul Gause was hard in the end because I didn't want to say to him, Paul, this is your last game. So I tried to act like it was not really his last game. I just said, go out there and play hard until the end, you know, we're going to play a game in post-season. You're going to play again, you know. It was tough because he's giving me everything he had. I didn't want him to go out this way, even though we battled. I was glad we got it down to 15. You know, I think everybody that saw the game tonight knows we gave them a fight. So Paul Gause had a lot to do with that. Q. Paul, is that why you didn't want to come out of the game at the end? PAUL GAUSE: Actually I came out when the coach told me to go back in. I was kind of tired. COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: He wanted to take himself out. PAUL GAUSE: He told me to stay in and finish it out. I stayed in and finished it out to try to help my team as much as possible. Q. Looks like were you still trying for steals there. PAUL GAUSE: The refs said don't reach. I said I was trying to get the steals record. Q. Paul, what happened from your vantage point? What happened with that whole double-technical fracas right there. Could you see -- PAUL GAUSE: It's just a real physical game. Guys battling. It was back and forth, they go up by two, we go up by two, an emotional game. We know their players, they know us. There's no bad blood between us at all. After the game we all shook hands and said, good luck and fair well. Wasn't nothing. It's who responded and they responded a little bit better than we did. Q. Jeremy, was their length -- Coach talked about their length; was that a tough thing as far as getting open shots just how long they are in that zone? JEREMY HAZELL: Yeah. Especially Syracuse, they played a 3-2, the best in the whole country. Their wings get out and the guards down low shaded me, made it tough for me to get shots. They just pressured the ball and they had just a great game today. They hit a lot of 3s. They made it tough for us inside and outside. I just give it up to Syracuse. They was a hell of a team. They deserved to win that game. COACH BOBBY GONZALEZ: I wanted to point out something. We took care of the basketball all year. We were second in the conference in turnovers. We had 18 turnovers tonight and again that's the length of their zone. We showed an efforts stat with 18 offensive rebounds and the fact that we beat them on the boards by four. We don't beat many teams on the boards by four. It shows how hard we played. We couldn't make shots. We were 9 for 28, you know, we didn't get to the line much, 7 for 14, 50 percent. You know, our legs a little bit, I think most of the teams have played a game yesterday, I don't think anyone won today that played yesterday. The higher seeds all won and they all looked more rested. It's not an excuse. They earned it. During the regular season, they earned it. Q. Paul, Coach mentioned when John went out with his fourth foul, it sort of the changed the way things were going. Did you guys feel that way once he had to come out, that -- because were you feeding him pretty consistently to get back in the game. PAUL GAUSE: Yeah. John, he's a tough guy down low. You can really rely on him. I think it's kinds of unfair to put our younger guys in that position in such a stretch of the game like that where John, he has good hands. He finishes around the basket well. You know, our bigs came in and did as much as they could. It's tough to put them in that situation. We definitely missed John. JOHN PAQUETTE: Any other questions for Seton Hall? Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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