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DICK'S SPORTING GOODS NIT SEASON TIP-OFF

November 27, 2009

Jim Calhoun

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

THE MODERATOR: Coach will make an opening statement and then he'll take questions.
COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, Duke physically handled us, which I thought alleviated that problem a little bit. The physical presence, obviously the rebounding was, in my opinion, the major problem with the game. The last time we gave up 25 offensive rebounds against Georgetown with Alonzo and Mutombo who are bigger than Duke was. But Duke played with a great deal of heart and toughness.
Last time that we at Connecticut lost a game, hold a team to eight field goals in the half and 28 percent shooting, I can't remember. But I think that we couldn't have hit the court if we were up in the second deck with the ball ourself, certainly from the foul line and certainly from the floor we were an awful passing team tonight. I think we ran at times a little offensive team but didn't get open. Just quite frankly, they outwilled us and did all the things you need to do to win a game. And yet there were chances even with six or seven minutes to go for to us come back in the game and we were unable to take advantage of it.
During the season, discouraging a little bit, certainly, but disheartening more than anything else. I think we're better than what we played. I think we have to respond to when we get knocked around inside a little bit. We have to do a better job. I can't complain about Alex Oriakhi, the freshman. We had some guys that 87 missed shots. The guy gets three or four rebounds playing 35 minutes, the best jumper from the floor, you might have a problem. I have a game player on the court who didn't get three or four rebounds from the guard spot. We had 87 missed shots, discounting foul shots and we missed a lot of those too. We didn't have much of an excuse in this one.

Q. Coach, being down double digits in the second half and then coming back and having a chance to get back into it again, how frustrating was it having Jerome miss a couple of lay-ups?
COACH JIM CALHOUN: Jerome was one of the guys I thought at times we shut out because we didn't get him the ball when he was open. Secondly I thought he just was exhausted by the end of the game. Jerome Dyson was not a problem tonight certainly. But it was frustrating missing the foul shots. He worked very hard at it. When you're down, making that type of effort to come back, I think we fouled three or four of their guys out of the game, bottom line is we didn't finish plays. There was a lot of lay-ups. We weren't pulling a lot of second shots by them. That frustrated me a great deal more. They went nine out of ten trips without scoring and we couldn't take advantage of that. That wasn't just foul shots. That was almost everything.
Mainly quite frankly, guys that were open never got the ball. And that's usually been something that we do pretty well.

Q. 25 offensive rebounds you talked about, hasn't happened in a while. From watching from where you were, what do you think was the cause of it?
COACH JIM CALHOUN: They banged us inside and you got a choice. You bang back and get the ball or get banged. That was the cause of it. They're a physical team. They go after the loose ball. A few times when they were up 18 they went down to the floor to get the ball and we didn't. They weren't rotating a lot of people through nor were we. We tried to but we couldn't find anybody on the bench to really help us except Gavin.
So it's been a problem four out of our five games, for whatever reason. I don't know with a the reason is. You can't leave an 18-year-old freshman to be the only guy rebounding. That's a major problem. They rebounded well as a team. Mike is obviously a great, great coach. I think we all know that. He got his team to rebound much better than what Connecticut did. That's normally been something that we've held our -- going into most games knowing we're going to play our defense, which we did. We're going to hold -- they have a guy who is going be a big pro. Singler certainly, he's a smaller version of a Larry Bird-type player. And Sticks (Stanley Robinson) didn't play well but he did a great job defensively on him.
I'm so appalled by the lack of rebounding by us as a team. You can't beat anybody if they get 25 offensive rebounds. If you hold somebody to 28 percent, you can't lose, but if you give them 25 offensive rebounds and they can't make a shot or a foul shot, you can get some problems.

Q. How much of a concern overall is your perimeter shooting?
COACH JIM CALHOUN: That's the least of us. We got to the rim all night. That was -- how much -- they are one of the best perimeter-shooting teams in the country. If you talked to Mike, ask Mike how he liked shooting 28 percent. We shot 37. He has more problems than we do. You know what I'm saying? Shooting 50 percent as a team for five games. So I don't think perimeter shooting was our problem. I think our problem was when we caught the ball in the post and shooting fade-away jumpshots. Until we made the comeback, we weren't going to the hoop because we had a quick disadvantage going to the rim. That was much more my concern. It wasn't a problem the other night; 5-for-10 the other night. I didn't want them taking 3s. I thought we had quickness to go by them.

Q. There was a minute you pulled Robinson, talked to him, talked to him and sent him back out.
COACH JIM CALHOUN: I told him to get his ass going and play some basketball. He didn't. He did defend. He played a very good player flat up and wouldn't give him any open shots. But Robinson, once again, for him to play 35 minutes and get four rebounds in a game of 87 misses, just can't happen. He's a terrific rebounder.
And Alex desperately needed somebody else. Charles couldn't do it. The game was either too sophisticated for him. He hasn't yet been into that kind of thing. Gavin should have rebounded more. I can't fault Gavin coming off the bench; he only played 24 minutes. I can fault Sticks because I have to rely on him. He's supposed to be one of the premiere players in the league, certainly in the country. He didn't play well on the offensive end.

Q. The deliberate offense Duke was running where they would run the shot clock down at the end, you are playing defense so long and to give up that offensive rebound, do you think that also got into something for your guys --
COACH JIM CALHOUN: I questioned it at times. They had us on the ropes. Then what I was reminded of was the fact that they had three guys with three fouls and another guy with four fouls. And they were trying to play a little clock and plus they had a nice cushion, 18, whatever it was; 20 -- whatever it was -- 19, 16, they are running like that, and execute some offense. If we had gotten those rebounds, hold them to 9 out of 10 stops, if five of those times we score, we scored one of those, by the way. One time we scored. All we had to score was five of those nine times and all of a sudden you have yourself a 5 or 6 or 7-point ballgame. We were unable to do that.
The other thing was long rebounds. We outquicked them, it seems. But they outquicked us to the ball when they needed to get it to the offensive end which is something that can't happen to us.
THE MODERATOR: Last question? Okay.

End of FastScripts

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