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ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2011Langston GallowayCarl JonesPhil MartelliATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY Dayton – 64 COACH MARTELLI: I thought the preparation was the right way for us to go. We had some tired legs to begin the game. We had some good looks and all of a sudden we're looking at trailing. We hung in there in that first half. We got down as much as 9 and stayed in there, and got out of the half at 4. Big basket I thought was the first basket of the second half. They ran something that we hadn't really gone through, and then it became a numeric game. In the end, if you shoot 10 for 17 in the semifinals from the foul line, you're not going to win. We turned the ball over three times on out of bounds, twice on the baseline, and once on that sideline at the very end. But we were a play not good enough, if that makes sense. We belonged in the game, and certainly all of these guys gave us 40 minutes of everything they had. Some guys had more than others, based on yesterday. Langston (Galloway) and Tay (Trevisan) were playing on tired legs. Q. Carl, this group became so much better in the last couple of weeks. What do you take away from the last week as a spring board going forward? CARL JONES: Mostly our togetherness, and we worked harder in practice instead of being lazy in practice because it relates to games. The harder you go in practice, the more you go in games. So that's what I took from the last month was we were going hard in practice, so we felt like we were going to win the last couple of games. So practice. Q. Carl, you struggled from the three-point distance today. How much of that was their defense, and how much of that was being fatigue? CARL JONES: I wouldn't say fatigue. I would say defense, because I had a couple of nice open looks. So I just blame that on myself. Q. Langston, can you talk about this game in terms of ending the season and how much you feel for the guys who are senior leaders on this club? Can you talk about what it means? LANGSTON GALLOWAY: I mean, it's tough knowing that this is his last game. We fought hard trying to keep them going, keep winning. But a couple of bad errors, bad turnovers and a couple of bad block outs just prevented that. Q. This team showed a lot of improvement in the past month. Can you put your finger on where things turned around for you and got you through January? CARL JONES: I can say a little bit on myself. I tried to become more point guard, get my teammates involved more instead of just always roaming. Looking for my own shots. I tried to get my teammates involved becoming a better point guard instead of a better scorer. So I'm trying to become a point guard instead of a scorer. Q. With a big win Tuesday and an emotional game last night, was it tough to get back up to 100% today? CARL JONES: I wouldn't say it's so much being sluggish. We were tired, of course. We played two games in two days, but it was really just executing at the end of the game. If we executed, we'd be the ones and we wouldn't be in the position right now. So I would say executing the end of the game. Q. Langston, for a guy like you, this is a growing experience all season long. Where do you stand in terms of the springboard now for this next year, you individually? Where does the team go from here? LANGSTON GALLOWAY: We definitely can build on this one. Getting to the semifinals, though, we definitely weren't picked to get here. Next year we just keep getting better. The freshmen, Tay, Todd (O'Brien), Halil (Kanecevic) and Chris that's coming in next year. So we can build on this and try on get better. Q. To have this one now and to have gone through the experience like those guys were talking about, how do you look at this season as a coach when you look back on it towards the tail end of it? COACH MARTELLI: That's an interesting question. I always think you are what your numbers are. So I think we won a third of our games and that doesn't sit well with me. So I start the evaluation based on what I have to do better to put them in position to have these kind of experiences because that's what it was. This week has been an experience for them, and a positive experience. Even the hurt that they have right now can be a positive because it's a shared hurt. It's not an individual hurt. Look, we lost our last game, and that's what sits with me. I've always believed that my responsibility was to prepare them to win the next game, and we tried to do that over these 20 hours, and we weren't successful. So whether it's out of bounds or coming up with a different way of shooting pressure foul shots, that will happen, and that will start immediately. I mean, we're going to gather them Monday morning for academics. We'll gather them Monday afternoon for basketball and go forward. Q. What were you looking to do on that sidelines inbounds play at the end? COACH MARTELLI: Well, we were trying to get Tay away from the bench. He was going to run off a flair screen set by Todd O'Brien, and there was a little bit of panic. He ran towards half court. But we wanted him to go off the long side of the floor, hoping to catch them with a blind rear screen. Then we were going to -- what we wanted to do is flood the one side of the floor with C.J. and Langston. I wanted Langston to come off C.J. to go in the corner and then have C.J. flash up to like the 45 degree. And we just didn't get it. We didn't get there. We went a little too fast. I tried to steal some time. I thought maybe the clock had gone a couple of ticks. I was trying to steal some time and get it drawn up. But this isn't a group that you can draw something up on the fly like that. You've got to put it in the memory bank to take to practice and work on something like that when we have no timeouts. Q. You fell behind in that second half, midway through the second half, yet you were able to turn it around and get yourself back in contention. What were you doing at that point to get yourself back into the game? COACH MARTELLI: I actually think that what we were doing was we were going a little bit harder. We were coming a little bit harder offensively. We had a flurry where we made some shots. I thought Hilliard kind of stabilized things. But we stayed defensively with our plan. We still played some zone. We're walking out of here giving up 64 points, that's the right number. I thought the first one to 63 in this game was going to win. Giving a whole lot of credit to their defense. So we gave up 41%. They have two guys with monster games at 36 points. I just think that what we did is we went a little bit faster. Not just quicker, but we went faster on offense and we got some buckets at the rim. Even saying that, we left some points out there because we missed three or four foul shots in that last I guess three minutes or 2:50 left. We missed three foul shots down that last stretch. Q. I would think the goal for a young team that's going to improve would be better than you were early in the season. Did you see of much improvement over the past few weeks or the month? COACH MARTELLI: Well, I think you can take out young. I think for any basketball team improvement is what you're hoping for. You're hoping for improvement in a lot of different areas. You're hoping for improvement in their desire to continue to play. You guys all watch the games. There are teams right now that are tired. They're just tired. They look exhausted. That makes me scratch my head because they're 18 to 23 years old, and they're playing a game. But they get tired. They really do. Sometimes they worry about their own agenda, and that gets them tired. They're getting beat up by their girlfriend, they're getting beat up by their family. Why aren't you playing more? Why aren't you playing better? And that gets them tired. So to me, this team emotionally grew. They grew as teammates. It's a very, very quiet group. There are times that I would think, you know what, they're each in their own bubble, and we need to get through that, and we did do that. In basketball I thought that all of these guys showed signs of improvement. But I saw that every day. I just didn't see it collectively so that I can sell it to somebody else. I saw it every day where this team, somebody did something, I thought, well, they couldn't do that yesterday or they were afraid to try that yesterday. So, yeah. Yeah, we've improved. But we still walk out with the tattoo. The tattoo is 11-22, and 12th in the league, and that doesn't sit well first and foremost with the coach. We're going to improve on that. Q. Does Dayton's record say something about the league? They are the ninth seed in the tournament. COACH MARTELLI: I think the biggest number that says something about the league is the fact that they lost four games in the Dayton Arena, which I think is a marvelous home court. This is a terrific, terrific league. I don't have to sell it to anybody, but I will gladly sell it to anybody. The teams whose names appear on that board tomorrow at 6:00 o'clock, the other teams in the country that play in the Atlantic 10, you're going to know it. You have teams that are at a very high level. Certainly two of them will go into the tournament as nationally ranked. I'm sure Xavier and Temple will go into the tournament nationally ranked. But you look at the wins. Look at due Wayne, they won 8 games in a row in this league playing a style that you just don't see anywhere else. Dayton. I mean, think about that. Chris Wright, if I'm not mistaken, is he 13th all league? I mean, Chris Wright, a kid of that caliber, it does speak volumes. But I think four teams could go into the Dayton Arena and beat that team. That speaks really about the quality of the league. Q. Would you assess Dayton's chances in the finals tomorrow? COACH MARTELLI: I think they have a 50-50 chance of winning or losing. I don't know that it's a foregone conclusion. They have a couple things going for them. One, this week they're playing and shooting the ball better, so they're coming out hotter. 37-16 at UMASS, 21-3 yesterday, unless I'm mistaken. They jump on us pretty good. I don't know if it got as high as 11, but it was certainly as high as 9. Again, a lot of credit goes to their fouling. I honestly believed that this crowd would be way over the top pro Saint Joseph's for just that reason. I thought all the Richmond people and Temple people would pull for Saint Joseph's thinking that we were the fish, to be honest with you, for tomorrow. But I don't think anything's a foregone conclusion. I think the other thing you have to factor in here is that is going to be a high-intensity game out there right now. And Dayton does have a two and a half hour head start in getting rested and prepared. What I hope for for the league is I hope that it is just a dynamite national TV performance. Because that's what this league is. This league is dynamite. Q. (Ronald) Roberts only got off two shots today. Was that their defense mostly, or were you guys just not finding him? COACH MARTELLI: No, it was -- Ron was brilliant yesterday off of what you would call broken plays. Within our offense itself, we have to find ways to punch the ball to the lane a little harder. We have more shots for threes. That's not by design. That was by result today. That was by circumstance. Ron is a quality young player who has improved. But I'm not leaving here saying he should have had nine shots or he should have had 11 shots. To me it's a product of playing good basketball that you get your shots. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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