|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: GREENSBOROMarch 21, 2009A.J. AbramsRick BarnesDamion JamesVarez WardGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Duke Blue Devils – 74 PHIL WARSHAUER: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Can you talk about the effort you guys and the performance you guys gave and just coming up short, what the feeling is like? A.J. ABRAMS: I thought we played hard. We kind of dug ourselves a hole a little bit. But we showed a lot of character, not only in this game but throughout the season of just having the will to fight back. I'm proud of what we did. We, obviously, came up short of what we want to do, but it was a good effort from all of us. Q. Damion, can you talk about the play when Jon Scheyer went into the bench and threw it up the court? What was your perspective on that? And also, what happened to you at the scorer's table when you were down for a while? DAMION JAMES: It was a tough play when Jon threw the ball down the court. Me, personally, it was a loose ball, so whoever got it, got it. But the ref's called the play. I hit a nerve in my arm, and my whole arm went numb for like five or so minutes, and it was hurting really bad, and I couldn't feel my arm. But it's okay now. Q. Could you talk about what your goal was when Rick put you in the game with about 10 minutes left? I saw him talk to on you on the sideline before he sent you in. VAREZ WARD: Well, all year I've been kind of the defensive stopper on the team. My goal was to try to come in and slow down Henderson a little bit. He got off to a really good start in the first half. And I wanted to try to come in and slow him down a little bit. That was basically my role when I entered the game. Q. Offensively, too? VAREZ WARD: Offensively I was just trying to take care of the ball, that was the main thing. I had a turnover early in the game, and I didn't want to turn it over again. So just taking care of the ball and making smart plays. Q. Driving the ball? Was that also a goal, going to the goal with it? VAREZ WARD: Oh, yeah. Going to the goal and just making smart plays. Q. You got called for a foul on a rebound. From your perspective, what happened there? DAMION JAMES: It was another tough call. The dude was hanging on my arm. It was kind of like a jump-ball situation. It was just a tough call in a situation like that. You know, it really hurt us. But it happens. Q. How do you feel the Blue Devils did defending you as a shooter? A.J. ABRAMS: I had some open looks. I had taken some tough shots early on that are knocked down. But as a group, I don't think they did anything special to stop me. I think we looked to Varez to start penetrating, and he did his thing as far as getting to the lane and creating for others. So we just came up short. PHIL WARSHAUER: We'll continue with questions for Coach Barnes. Q. Jon Scheyer's pass he made down the court. Your thoughts on that, especially the fact he didn't throw it back under his own goal and that kind of thing? How that sort of, one of those little heady plays that they seem to come up with in that last minute, minute and a half. COACH BARNES: Well, I don't know how you want me to answer that other than the fact he went out of bounds with it, and that is the direction he threw it. Give him credit for that. When the ball went out of bounds, at first we were told it was a non-shooting foul. Then we sub a little bit, and it ends up being a shooting foul. Again, ended up being a great play. Q. But just to follow-up, I think Dave McClure in addition tapped out the rebound missed free throw. It seemed like not just Jon Scheyer's play and that one as well, there were a lot of these little plays that they came up with. It was almost like 50-50 balls that maybe they got? COACH BARNES: They came up with them. Q. You missed a lot of free throws. Got caught on some picks outside. Had some defensive lapses and still with a minute to go, you're in the ballgame. How did that happen? COACH BARNES: We told our guys we would stick around, stay, and actually told them at 4:00 minutes we were right where we needed to be. We did the turnovers. Didn't take care of the ball as well as we wanted to early. The missed free throws hurt you along the way. But toughness. I thought we showed real toughness tonight. At no point in time did our guys really flinch and think they couldn't get back in the game. We felt at some point in time we knew we were going to open up the court and start driving the ball. Our defense definitely got going there, put some pressure on them. We started switching some ball screens and forced them into some tough shots. Q. Looking back it seemed like you found that guy in the final game who can go get his own shot when he wants it. Any way you wish that could have happened earlier with Ward? COACH BARNES: Again, it goes back. They chose to come out and guard. We felt that the one thing we could do is take them off the dribble. As you know, you've watched us all year. Lot of teams didn't guard us there. They backed up in the lane. That's why we felt pretty good coming in that if we take care of the ball we could shoot a high percentage. But we felt we could get the ball to the basket. Q. Obviously, this has been a disjointed team at times. During the year you've had to remake it over and on over sometimes within a game. Talk about the accomplishment of getting to this point being within a couple of minutes of the Sweet Sixteen? COACH BARNES: That's what I told the team after the game. We went through a lot of growing pains. We had to adjust it seemed like all year long looking for consistency. At some point in time every player on our team this year helped us. With that said, I thought the one thing that was really impressive with this group is the chemistry was great from the beginning. It never changed. They just worked their way through it. It wasn't pretty. It was tough on everybody. It was never pretty. But the one thing we did is we competed. We came in here tonight really, fully expecting to win this game. We're disappointed. We're definitely disappointed because we thought it was right there for us. You know, we didn't finish it. Q. Can you talk about the inside situation? The first few plays of the game it seemed like you were able to go inside at will after that. You got away from them though you had the blocks on the offensive board? COACH BARNES: We were going to go inside. And Dexter, fatigue plays a little factor in it, too. We were going to keep going in there as long as we could. But they really started filling up the lane, too. They started doing that and we were turning the ball over too much trying to go in there and force feed it in there. But, again, with Dexter as much as we can, we want to play through him. But yet, A.J., you want to get him going, too. So you work the game. I mean there are points in the game where we're going to try to do certain things. We knew at some point in time we were going to open the floor up and just start driving the ball at them and see how they would handle it. But we wanted to wait to do that more so in the second half. When we really got back to where we needed to be, that was working for us. Q. Just to be clear on the free throws after Gary's foul, if you had known they were free throws and would there have been different guys in the game to block out? COACH BARNES: Yes. We could still have subbed at that point in the time. But yeah, we were set up for a special situation, out of bounds play. We talked that whole timeout about what we were going to do to try to create a five-second call, and then it ended up being on the free-throw line. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|