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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 12, 2011

Rick Pitino

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

UConn: 69
Louisville: 66

COACH PITINO: It was a hard fought game and Connecticut deserves a lot of credit. It's not easy to win five games in a row. We beat ourselves a little bit down the stretch. We couldn't even miss a free-throw the right way. But proud of our guys who held the season and now we have to get ready for the postseason. You know, Cincinnati, Marquette, the conference USA teams who have come over. Anytime you get to the finals you're going to play a road game and that's the breaks if you face St. John's, Syracuse, Connecticut, any of those teams.
We fought hard and almost came up with a victory.

Q. Rick, you mentioned you couldn't miss a free-throw right, I assume that the player was supposed to miss the third one --
COACH PITINO: Yeah.

Q. Were you surprised that it didn't seem like they were as fatigued as maybe other teams that you would have played?
COACH PITINO: I said in the pregame show we expected they wouldn't be fatigued because they kids play -- I think it's insanity. They play three games in one day in the summertime in one day and they go back the next day and play three games again. These kids are used to it.
You know, they're a good basketball team. They get a chance to rest a little bit because they hold it in the hands of one guy and they have an opportunity to rest at time and that's where their assists are low, and with all the timeouts it's not as excruciating as you may think.

Q. A dozen steals and 16 turnovers, that's the most you've had in a while. Is that their defense or --
COACH PITINO: They would reach from behind and strip us. We did a good job of beating them but we didn't cross over with the ball and we had three turnovers that way.

Q. Coach, when Kemba started to get in foul trouble did you feel that your team would have been able to take more advantage than it did?
COACH PITINO: Not really. They played without them before. We did cut it to 6 and we were pleased but obviously it was the tale of two halves. The first half we didn't play great defense and the second half we played great defense and shot to win the game but turned it over. .

Q. How goofed a situation is it that Mike had to deal with when you're down 3 and you have those free-throws?
COACH PITINO: That doesn't bother me to tell you the truth. None of that stuff ever bothers me, missed shots. What bothers me is the fact that he didn't block out five times during the game, we didn't get a boxed sideline out of bounds play. What bothers me is we were had to run a specific play and I had to waste a time-out because he was about ready to travel.
Those things we can control and that bothers me. Missed shots never bother me. We made mistakes down the stretch but in an action-packed game, you're going to make mistakes and hopefully we learned for the NCAA. These guys got beat by a better team tonight. We've beat 'em twice and it wasn't two overtimes, it was one overtime. I don't know why ESPN kept saying that. But they're a heck of a team they deserve a lot of credit.

Q. The performance you guys have had is so solid, is there a seeding --
COACH PITINO: I don't care. I'm more concerned about the fact that we didn't run an out-of-bounds play right and -- I can't control those things. I'm amazed at how much time e spend to try and guess what seed you are -- what amazes me is it doesn't matter what anybody says but we continue not to wait. Like the biggest thing in the world is the Academy Awards, the Oscars, and there is not 10% of the talk of who is going to win the Academy Awards, is where you are going to be seeded, who is in or who's out and there must be interest, more than likely we're going to be a 4 seed, if we won tonight a 3 seed. But they're going to take in the full body of work and we've beaten Connecticut twice, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, we've beat West Virginia even our losses -- we beat Notre Dame, we had a loss at Notre Dame, at West Virginia at the buzzer, at Georgetown at the buzzer, and even tonight we have to give every ounce of perspiration we have in us to stay in certain games because we are small.
We're proud of that and we have great wins but more than likely we would be a 4 seed. I would rather go to a decent place than anything else, rather than a seed, like Hawaii (Chuckles.)

Q. Rick, how was that out-of-bounds play supposed to work?
COACH PITINO: We didn't get in it and we didn't screen. The interesting thing is I told the guys I once lost a similar situation and I warned them in practice that if you don't get into your box and screen you in your box, you're going to lose a crucial game and it happened to us in the biggest game we've played. We still had to make the shot and they still have a chance to make their shot so you don't know if that was the cause of it. It taught us a valuable lesson and we must have gone over it 15 times in practice and we don't do it and I said guys everybody is going to pick up your defense on the side, and Peyton never waited for the screens and we got burned on it and all of those things help you unless it's the last game of the season, last game then it doesn't help at all because they're going forget it.
It's been a wonderful year, it's been great playing in the finals, thank you all for the coverage. I hope the RPI puts this in as a road effort to help us a little bit with our RPI ranking and maybe we'll bring a few more fans next time. Good job, Kyle. (Chuckles.)

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