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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2011Jackson EmeryJimmer FredetteDave RoseLAS VEGAS, NEVADA San Diego State – 72 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by BYU. Coach, if we could start with your comments on today's game. COACH ROSE: I'm really impressed with San Diego State. I thought that they, you know, just played with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion. They caused us a lot of problems. In transition, you know, they got the ball out and scored in transition. They got a lot of second-chance points controlling the boards early in the game. I was really pleased with how our guys competed. I was pleased with how we fought. We had a hard time making shots, open shots. That's what our team really depends on, is being able to score in space. Credit goes to San Diego State. Wish them the very best in the NCAA tournament. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Jimmer, looks like there were some words exchanged between you and Kawhi Leonard. Could you tell us what was said? JIMMER FREDETTE: You know, he just said some things. I'm not going to repeat anything that he said. But he was excited that they won. Decided to say some things. I'm not going to back down. I said a couple things as well, then we were done. We went forward. Q. How much of the loss depended on being tired from yesterday and how much do you think depended on missing Davies today? JACKSON EMERY: I mean, the thing with Davies is we moved on. That was last week. We're a different team now. We're not going to make excuses anymore. We're a different team. We have a lot of confidence in the guys we have. We believe we could have beat them with these guys. We're not going to put anything on not having Brandon. We weren't tired; we were beat up. It's been a long couple days. We never played three games before right in a row. It was tough on us. But I think we had stretches, like coach said, where we just didn't hit shots. When we're not hitting shots and they're hitting shots, it's really tough to beat them. Q. It appeared that you had to work a little harder for your shot today. Their length may have been an issue. Was that true? If not, was fatigue at all a problem? JIMMER FREDETTE: I played against them two times this year already, so I've seen what they were going to do and everything. But I think the main thing is we just weren't shooting real well. Sometimes that happens. They played good defense. They're long, they're athletic. They caused us some problems. But at the end, you know, we just didn't really make shots that sometimes we normally make to keep us in the game. Q. Jimmer, would you have rather had your 52 points today or yesterday? JIMMER FREDETTE: I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yesterday was yesterday. That's over. We're talking about today. We lost. That's what happened. Q. How long do you dwell on this? How soon can you start turning your attention to the NCAA? JACKSON EMERY: This will hurt for probably tonight. We wake up tomorrow, we go home, we get ready for NCAA selection. Coach talked to us in the locker room. A good trademark of this team is how well we bounce back from losses. We would have loved to have won this game. But we're going to move on. We have a great week ahead of us. We're excited. Tomorrow we'll learn where we're going to go and we'll go back to work on Monday. Q. Jimmer, can you and Jackson both talk about the job Billy White did today. JIMMER FREDETTE: Yeah. No, he did a good job. He was very excited to play this game. He hasn't beaten us in a while. You could tell they were excited, ready to come out and play. He was very energized right from the very beginning with offensive rebounds, playing good defense, just doing things to help his team win. He did a good job. He was a big key to the game. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes at this time and continue with questions for Coach Rose. Q. We talked about the emotion with players in the locker room. As far as next week goes, from your perspective, when do you start putting all the mindset on next week for the tournament? COACH ROSE: I think we'll find out who we play. Once we find out who we play and where we're going, this group of guys, the core group of guys has been through this before, and Monday will be a really big day for us in the gym, in preparation. So, you know, the most important thing now is to get ourselves back home, get rested, find out where we're going and then prepare from there. Q. I have to imagine if before the game I told you both teams would have ended up with 16 offensive rebounds you would have liked your chances. COACH ROSE: With San Diego State, the way they guard Jimmer, they get spread out pretty good. So we can offensive rebound the ball well against them. The problem, a lot of those we had chances to score on, we couldn't get the ball in. Then it turned into the times when Jimmer would penetrate, then we would get a couple other guys on the rim and we wouldn't secure the ball. They got out in transition. Second half we had to make a couple adjustments and try to keep the transition points down. Key for us is, you know, when Jimmer gets in a situation where they're going to run two, two and a half guys at him, then we have to be able to make shots. Especially against San Diego State, because when you turn into a driving team and you try to get to the rim, that's where they're terrific. They've got size. They've got length. They've got athleticism. They make you change your shot at the rim. Give 'em credit, they played. They played terrific tonight. Q. For what it's worth, a lot of the brackets place you in Denver. Have you given any thought to it? Being in the same time zone. COACH ROSE: There's not much thought for me personally to put in it because once you start thinking about one thing, then something else is going to happen. You can't really control what's next. I'm really proud of our team, their consistency throughout the year. We have a great record. We have a great RPI. We played in a great league. Hopefully we'll get a great seed and a good place to go. Q. James Anderson had a good amount of minutes today. Do you think that will continue? COACH ROSE: I thought it was important in this game here because of fatigue. I thought James came in, his size and length caused some problems around the rim. James is kind of a situation, opportunity-type player. Most of the time when he's called on, he does a really good job. We'll see what our matchup is, and that will probably determine most of that. Q. The first two times you played San Diego State, you switched off of man and a 2-3 and beat them. I wonder why this game you went 2-3 this whole game. COACH ROSE: A lot of it is, you know, just size and matchups. We felt like we needed to bring a second defender on Kawhi. We needed to bring a second defender on Malcolm. We needed to bring a second defender on Billy White. And Chase Tapley got off to such a good start hitting perimeter shots, we thought our zone, we could spread out a little bit more and double-team better out of the zone, so that's why we stayed in it. Q. Considering the losses you had this year in the post with Chris and Brandon, would you consider this your biggest challenge, making the adjustments to make this team continue on with success? COACH ROSE: This group has been very resilient. I expect them to continue to be resilient because we ran into a very good team tonight that were playing with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion. I thought we matched that for a while, but they just kind of wore us down. I was really proud of the fight that our guys showed because we were down big and it looked like our body language was bad. We got in a timeout. We came out. We addressed it. We talked about it. We cut that lead down and actually had a possession to cut the game to eight. We couldn't make the play. There's a lot of fight in these guys and I'm proud of 'em. Q. Of your body of work, would you speak to what you think is the strongest part, then put it in perspective this week, being here. COACH ROSE: Well, you know, I don't think one game in a conference tournament on the third night is the way to really evaluate a team. I think that you evaluate a team over the course of four or five months. This team has been all over the country, found ways to win games, competed extremely well in the fourth-ranked RPI team in the country, have a regular-season co-championship, has 30 wins, has an RPI in the top 10. I think these players have earned the right to play on. Q. Points in the paint and second-chance points were a little bit of a problem tonight. How much of that do you attribute to just the strength of San Diego State's frontline and how much could that be a concern for somebody with a similar frontline? COACH ROSE: It will be a real concern, who matches up with them, because that's a very good team. They've got two losses on the year. Not very many teams are going to go into that tournament with just two losses. Someone is going to have to put together quite a game to beat 'em. I wish Steve and his team the very best. Q. When the dust settles, will you take comfort and tell your team, We're not going to play a format, playing three games in three days, so we'll be fine going into that? COACH ROSE: I think we understand that. I think our guys understand that a day off in between is really important when you are in a rotation of maybe seven or eight guys. The most important thing is, you know, to find out the matchup, the bracket. But I really believe that this turnaround, that our team will handle this, the fact that we've been beat tonight, we got beat by a really good team, and now our focus needs to change to instead of feeling sorry for ourselves to get ourselves ready to bounce back and win the next game we play. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH ROSE: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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