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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 10, 2010Rick PitinoEdgar SosaNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Cincinnati – 69 COACH RICK PITINO: Well, Cincinnati deserves a lot of credit because we got them to take lot of difficult shots, but they kept getting put-backs and they won the game on offensive rebounding and they just really took us to the wood shed on the backboard. It's been a little bit of a weakness for us all year and it showed against that basketball team. That was our number one focus was to get on the backboard. Give them credit. We didn't get the job done. Q. Rick, despite that you had nine- or ten-point lead, what changed then? COACH RICK PITINO: I thought we forced things the first two minutes of the second half. Went one-on-three, one-on-four. They ran a couple of guys out. They ran Gates out. When you take bad shots, that's the easiest way to get a run out. I thought we lost the game in the first five minutes of the second half. Q. Coach, coming to this game what was the mentality? Did you feel like it was a game you had to win? COACH RICK PITINO: We know we're in the Tournament. We won 11 BIG EAST games and we beat the No. 1 ranked team in the country. That has nothing to do with not rebounding the basketball. We were playing for a good seed. Now we're not going to get one. So you can't expect to win giving up 28 offensive rebounds. Q. Coach, this overall effort does it have to be addressed when you get into the NCAA Tournament? COACH RICK PITINO: The effort was good. We're just physically not a strong team. They're a physically strong team. The effort was good. The guys tried hard. They were just more physical and bigger inside. We weren't big and physical enough. Q. Could you talk about the last possession? Vaughn says he was fouling you all the way up the court. The game plan was to foul you midcourt. EDGAR SOSA: I didn't feel like he was fouling me. Coach drew up a play for me to come off the screen and find some of the guys in the corner. I did a bad job. I took too much time off the clock. By the time I got across, there was two seconds left. I couldn't find anyone. Q. Coach, how much do you think at all not having Jerry (Smith) affected maybe the scoring-wise and -- COACH RICK PITINO: It affected us, but injuries are part of the game. We were playing very good basketball. Preston had a bad night. And obviously having Jerry would alleviate that -- Preston is not used to playing that many minutes. He plays really hard and he's not conditioned to play a lot of minutes like that. So we didn't get a good night out of him. But that's part of the game. Injuries are part of the game. Notre Dame played without Harangody for a long time and did a good job. Our guys have basically done a good job all season long. They have had their bumps in the road. The point of emphasis tonight was rebound the basketball. We rebound, we win. We knew that. We didn't, we lost. We go home early. Waste a lot of boosters' money. Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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