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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 12, 2009

Tyshawn Taylor

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA

Baylor Â– 71
Kansas - 64

CHARLIE FISS: Joined now by the Kansas Jayhawks and Coach Bill Self and his two student-athletes, Tyshawn Taylor and Marcus Morris.
Coach, opening comment on today's game?
COACH SELF: You know, the game obviously was not a well-played game by Kansas at all. I thought Baylor controlled the game from the get-go. They were certainly better than us from the start. We got exactly what we deserved.

Q. Tyshawn and Marcus, for how well you played in the regular conference season, what was it like for your first experience in the Big 12 tournament with a loss like this?
TYSHAWN TAYLOR: It is disappointing. We worked real hard to get here. We let this one slip away from us. We started off bad, and they played well early, and we had to fight back the whole game. We had the lead, but it slipped away from us. So it is real disappointing.
MARCUS MORRIS: Same. I fell as though we got off to a slow start and we were fighting back the entire game. At the end, we made a couple mistakes at the end that cost us the game.

Q. How does this affect your confidence, and where do you go from here?
TYSHAWN TAYLOR: We just got to look past it now. We can't get it back. We still have NCAA to look forward to.
We are going to go home and regroup and just try to be better in the next couple weeks.
MARCUS MORRIS: Basically go home and watch film and see what we did wrong and just try to not do the same thing our first game in NCAA. Make sure we don't lose in the first round.

Q. Marcus, when y'all battled back and got up by five, did you think you got them on the rim at that point? How did you expect them to react?
MARCUS MORRIS: I think we did, but you can't count on a team. They had been making threes and making almost every shot they put up. You can't count them out. We went on a run and we couldn't uphold the run.
They were just the better team today.
CHARLIE FISS: Thanks for coming.
We will now take questions for Coach Self.

Q. Bill, looked like early on right off the bat you were really trying to get the guys going early on. Is this something you saw coming a little bit ?
COACH SELF: Not really. I thought we -- we practiced really well since Saturday. And so I really didn't.
But we -- I don't know how you guys viewed it. I thought we looked like a really tired team today. There was no energy at all.
Our two key guys got to provide that leadership. We just didn't do a good job today. We were definitely a half step slow or a full step, and they beat us to the majority of the loose balls. We let them get comfortable. You can't let good shooters get comfortable.
Obviously we missed some easy shots and the further we got behind, the basket started shrinking a little bit and felt like we were shooting at the fair.
And then we finally got the lid off of it. We played decent for a stretch and then played pretty poorly down the stretch. They played good. They deserve to win the game.

Q. Last three games, somebody from the other team has come out on fire. If it is not Voskuil, it is Gary Johnson or Lace Dunn today. Is that something you can tell them to stop and get in their face and say it stops right here?
COACH SELF: I thought Damion James kicked us Saturday and Voskuil obviously in Lubbock.
But today we know how to guard Dunn and we did not guard him the way he should be defended.
And so he is a good shooter, and good player. We let him get comfortable. Very, very discouraging. It is something you tried to hang your hat on and something we did a very poor job of.

Q. Bill, you guys have rallied from some big deficits in recent games. Is that something that catches up with the team after a while?
COACH SELF: I would say probably yes. But today we didn't play very well. We had a five-point lead and you had to get some stops at that point and Baylor really, they made a couple of shots right after that. Dugat made a shot and something else happened. Next thing you know, that lead evaporated pretty quick.
But, you know, the whole thing is, this time of year, in my opinion, you got to play smart, you got to guard, you got to rebound. I didn't think we were very good in any of those areas today.

Q. With such a young team, how do you repair their psyche for next week with the NCAA?
COACH SELF: You know, that's a great question because we're not very tough if we can't come back from this.
I mean, you shouldn't base your entire psyche or confidence level on one game. I think we probably got some confidence over time. But I mean, we did a bad job today as a group so we had some individuals not play very well.
Everybody has been telling us or them that, you know, how happy they are with them and all this and that. I mean, today is a reality check. First thing we are doing, we go back when we get to the hotel and go to school tomorrow and make all the players walk around class tomorrow with all the other students wondering why are you back here already? And then we will practice as hard as we have ever practiced in the next two days and get them thinking about that as opposed to worrying about what just happened.

Q. Can you talk about trying to crack their zone and the problems it created?
COACH SELF: Well, we got the ball to the middle a lot earlier. We didn't convert. We bailed them out by shooting jump shots as opposed to taking the ball to the basket.
What a zone does -- and that was a stretched-out zone where the middle was open. What a zone does, it creates doubt. We weren't aggressive. We didn't get to play up against it. I don't know how many shots we had the second half that we took a step outside our shooting area. Just didn't play up against it and didn't drive it near enough. They gapped it and made you drive it.
At times we did a good job against it. But, certainly -- we usually play pretty good against a 2-3 zone. But certainly for the most part, I thought it was very effective against us. It also took us away from second-chance points for whatever reason. We didn't do a good job on offensive glass like you would think we would when we shoot that poorly against a zone where it is tougher to block out.
All in all, just pretty poor performance offensively.

Q. What did you think of Baylor's post play, especially in Rogers and Mamadou and how they were able to contain Aldrich a little bit?
COACH SELF: I think sometimes in a zone it is easier to take a big guy out. But I thought Kevin played very well. I thought Lomers was good, and I thought Diene was fabulous. If you look at their post guys, they didn't turn it over, they blocked shots, they altered shots. Diene -- the biggest block in the game is when it was a one-point game and Sherron had the lay-up and Diene made a great block.
I thought their post play was very, very good. Very good.

Q. Just following up on that Cole against five shots. Does that contribute to the zone or did you just not work the ball enough?
COACH SELF: I think it is a tribute to their zone. I think it is a tribute to our perimeter not doing a great job. Cole has to take responsibility for it, too. Guys have to find a way to get the ball. You saw what I saw. This was a game in which he labored probably as much as he has at any point in time this year.

Q. Do you know how Sherron is feeling about his performance and the way the game went?
COACH SELF: I think the whole team feels poorly. Here's a couple of guys that made first-team all-league and you want to come to our showcase of our league, which this is, the tournament, and perform your best and kind of validate what everybody else has been saying about you the whole year. We obviously didn't do that.
The thing about it is we did a lot of things poorly today. But the biggest reason we played poorly was because Baylor played good. So when you talk about us not playing well, we didn't do this, we didn't do that, you can always say that after a loss. The bottom line is they were better than us today.
CHARLIE FISS: Coach, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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