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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2011Jason ClarkAustin FreemanJohn Thompson IIINEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK UConn: 79 THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach and players. Q. Coach, what was the game plan to slow down Kemba Walker today? COACH THOMPSON: I think that we wanted to give him different looks, try to get it out of his hands early, hopefully make him kick it out. Q. Didn't seem like you got off to the start that you wanted. Early on you were matching them shot for shot but then there was a stretch of turnovers, was that the undoing the stretch in the middle half? COACH THOMPSON: That definitely was a large part of it. We went through a stretch where we were just turning the ball over, just giving it to 'em, which led to easy transition baskets for them. Q. Coach talk about missing Chris' presence on the court, how it's affected you guys. COACH THOMPSON: It is what it is but we miss Chris, absolutely. 100% both ends of the court and in every way. That being said the group that's playing right now that played today has to be better, has to be better. Better than we've been showing. Q. Coach, when you do get down in the hole like you were today, is the temptation to give the ball to Austin or what do you tell the guys to get back from a deficit like that? COACH THOMPSON: That's always the temptation, whether we're down or up is to get the ball to Austin. I think that's a good thing because he normally -- something positive comes out of it or he make the right decision, the right pass. Q. Coach, a combined 19 minutes for Julian and Henry, was that their ineffectiveness, was that match-up, and how does that change your offense when your big men aren't producing? COACH THOMPSON: It was -- they were not playing well so we went with a different lineup. Does that affect things? Yes. But they were not producing. You have to produce. Q. Austin and Jason, how are you looking forward to having a clean slate for the NCAA Tournament and making adjustments mentally and physically? AUSTIN FREEMAN: Well, we're going to take whatever happens and -- in this game, learning from it and go on and practice with a better mind-set, everybody will come in focused, ready to work, ready to prepare ourselves for the NCAA Tournament. Q. Can you talk about defending Kemba Walker especially when he's driving through the lane obviously he can score in a lot of different ways. How difficult is that when he's cutting the way he was today? JASON CLARK: Kemba is a very good player. He has a lot of weapons, you can't guard him one-on-one you have to have help from everybody else on your team and get the ball out of his hands. Q. Jason, where is the team's confidence level at going into the NCAA right now? COACH THOMPSON: We are a confident team. We know we can win, when, what we have to do to win games so we need to just get back on track, get back on track and try to win games. Q. Getting back to the turnovers there in the first half, was that something they were doing? Jim Calhoun said they pressured the ball a lot more today than they did in Hartford or was that you guys being careless? COACH THOMPSON: I think it was -- I think it was us being careless with the ball. AUSTIN FREEMAN: Going to our teammate and them bobbling it and it going out-of-bounds or they picked it up, that's pretty much what was happening. They won, like, nothing they were doing it was us being careless with the ball. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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