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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: MIAMI

March 22, 2009

Gary Waters

MIAMI, FLORIDA

Arizona 71
Cleveland State 57

LARRY WAHL: We have Cedric Jackson and Norris Cole along with Coach Waters. We'll open up with a statement from Coach Waters and then questions for the student-athletes. We'll let them go back to their locker room and then questions for Coach Waters. Coach?
COACH GARY WATERS: Let me first start, like I always do, give honor to God.
Secondly, let me just say I think I'm proud of these young men. They have fought extremely hard throughout an entire year. The game today really didn't epitomize anything about them, because sometimes these things happen in life. What epitomizes how hard they've worked and extremely pleased that they have continued to work to be who they are.
Arizona's, I thought, zone was really tough today. That's been our nemesis all year, the zone, because when people play us man-to-man, we really execute well. But the zone, you've got to hit shots, and if you don't hit shots, sometimes it's difficult to handle. We went 3-for-23, and it's hard to beat a team going 3-for-23 from the three-point line.
But I give them credit because our guys fought back. We had it within four and had the ball. If we would have executed on those plays, I think it may have been a different case. But my hat's off to Arizona because they're going to be pretty good in this tournament, if that zone stands still and Wise keeps playing the way he's playing and leading that team, they're going to be pretty good throughout this tournament. I think they'll even go to the next round.

Q. Cedric, Norris, at the start were you looking for that outside shot, because that's what worked against Wake, to jump on them early?
NORRIS COLE: Actually our plan was to get the ball to the paint, get the ball to the middle and then penetrate and kick out and if a shot was there, take it.

Q. This is for either of you guys: You've obviously come a long way, but I'm sure you're disappointed now. Can you talk about your feelings about what you've achieved here and maybe falling short?
CEDRIC JACKSON: We've come a long way from the start of the summertime, from our conference championship last year, we fell short. So our journey started then last year. You know, from that point until this point now, you know, we're not really sad that the game is over. You know, we're just really sad that our year is coming to an end as a family, you know what I'm saying? Just everything we do together every day, we won't really be doing that much anymore.
But we had a great year. We had ups and downs, losing on buzzer-beaters to Butler, but us still coming back to regroup. You know, it was just us against the world, and we prevailed all the way to this end. We're just proud that we could make it this far.

Q. Cedric and Norris, can you talk about how good Nic Wise is. And is he sort of an underrated point guard coming into this tournament a little bit?
NORRIS COLE: He's a very quick point guard, very shifty with the ball. It was difficult keeping him out of the paint. That was our plan, try to make him go east and west and not north and south, and he's a very quick point guard. I don't know how people rate him or anything, but from all the guards that I've checked this year, he's definitely one of the more difficult guards.

Q. Cedric, how difficult was that stretch when you were out with an injury at the end of the first half?
CEDRIC JACKSON: It was pretty difficult because I got scratched pretty bad in my eye and I couldn't see, but I tried to fight through it. I did the best I could, but I just tried to fight through it.
LARRY WAHL: We'll entertain questions for Coach Waters.

Q. Coach, coming from behind, you almost did it there in the second half. Talk about your team's resiliency cutting the lead until basically the last couple minutes?
COACH GARY WATERS: Yeah, that's what we've been doing basically all year. If you think about it in the tournament game, in our Horizon League tournament, we were behind in the second half every single game, and we came back and fought back. Eventually when you do that an awful lot, one time it's going to get you, and it caught up with us today.
But you know what, I can't just say the coming back caught up with us. I have to give credit to Arizona. Their zone was hard for us to crack. If you've watched our team all year, any games that we have struggled it's been a zone. What occurs is we're pretty good man-to-man. We can move the ball, we can execute, we can get the shots we want. But when the zone comes, it's only a particular shot. We still work it and try to get it inside and drive it, but it's not at the same pace we do against a man-to-man.

Q. Was there a point that you at any time decided to do something out of the ordinary with maybe even McCoy just to try to break it up when the shots weren't falling?
COACH GARY WATERS: Well, that wouldn't have helped because that's when we put Jeremy in, and he hit a three. It was just one of those days that we just weren't hitting our outside shot. If I would have exchanged that for the game before when we did hit a few outside shots.
But I've got to give them credit because we even had a hard time stopping the low point guard and stopping Budinger. He was doing some things there, but I thought in the second half Cedric did an outstanding job of keeping him away from the basket.
They were just the better team today. We can try all kinds of things. I have to admit, they were the better team today.
LARRY WAHL: Thank you very much.

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