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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: DENVERMarch 17, 2011Kyle KuricMike MarraRick PitinoDENVER, COLORADO Morehead State – 62 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with Louisville. We'll begin with Coach Pitino with some opening remarks. COACH PITINO: Well, I was real proud of our team this year. This is as tough a loss as I've had in coaching, and I've been coaching a long time, after tonight maybe too long. I feel terrible for our guys because they were just a wonderful group to coach. There's two things that have been our Achilles' heel the whole year. The three-point shot at the end of the game is one thing, we knew they were going to take a three. We lost some games this year because of two main reasons. One is rebounding, because we play our hearts out. And to play that hard and to give up that second shot, especially on the foul line, hurts. The second thing was free-throw shooting. We could have won the game tonight, iced it, certainly, but we didn't. Thought it was good. Didn't leave his hands. So it's a bitter loss for our guys. Good win for Morehead. They deserve all the credit. We knew this game would come down to the wire. All our games do. We very rarely have anything from buzzer beaters. We're 6', 6', and 6'2", and 6'4" across the front court, and we give up a lot of second shots unfortunately. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for the student-athletes. Q. Mike, what did you think of the no call? MIKE MARRA: I mean, you can't really expect the ref to make a call. Faried played good defense. I'm not really mad about the call. It is what it is. Q. Could you talk about your cold start from the floor. It took a long time before you got your first basket. KYLE KURIC: I mean, we don't get the offensive end like that. Yeah, we didn't score for a while. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was whatever, whatever excuse it was. We gave up a couple second shots. We didn't come out and stop them defensively early. We got a little hole. Came back later, forced some turnovers, got some layups on the fast break. That's what got us going. MIKE MARRA: Just what Kyle said. Sometimes the shots aren't falling in the beginning. We worked on turning the ball over and getting some easy shots. That started us get going, so... Q. Kyle, you guys have had injuries all year, played with just about everybody on the team. Talk about playing down that stretch in a game this big with Preston over there. KYLE KURIC: It's hard to play without him. He's been our leader the whole season. He stepped up big, made huge plays for us. Throughout the season, we had a lot of injuries and played through it. We did so tonight as well. We came back, made a game of it. The kid hit a tough shot. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes and continue with questions for Coach Pitino. Q. Was Preston, pretty much just from an emotional standpoint, him being the leader of the team, was he the one guy you couldn't really play without in this situation down the stretch? COACH PITINO: Obviously we did play without and had a great chance to win it. I thought we played great without him. I don't know what you were looking at. We played terrific without him. How could I say that? We took the lead, came back, made great plays. Q. What is your reaction to the no call at the end of the game? COACH PITINO: I didn't see it on film. Until I watch it on film... Did you see it? Q. Not clear. COACH PITINO: Yeah, look, I lost a game with 0.6, 75 feet away from the basket. You lose 'em sometimes that way, you win 'em sometimes that way. Q. Siva really struggled until the last few minutes. With several good plays down the stretch, did you think he put the rest of the game behind him? COACH PITINO: I think we had to play so hard to get back in the game, because early in the game, we couldn't get our press on because of the shots weren't falling. I thought that a few of our guys, when the shot didn't fall, got a little tight early on. They weathered a big storm. Right before the half it was crucial, we gave a wide open three, Chris Smith didn't get out on his man. We were so tired from working so hard, I could understand why that could happen. Peyton didn't have a good game. But Bullet came up big for us. Somebody has always been stepping up for us all year. Q. Do you have an indication of what Preston's injury is? COACH PITINO: Sprained foot. Q. You mentioned Justice. He came into the a tough spot, made a big shot in the second. Talk about his play in this game. COACH PITINO: He did a great job. It was a tough spot to be put in. Peyton was not having a good game. He had to come in and play really well. He hit a big three. Yes, he did his the free throw, but he made a big three, which meant so much to us. He didn't have a good year from the foul line. But he's only a freshman. We didn't expect to even play him this year. We're real proud of his effort, real proud of what our team accomplished. Q. You had a little period where you were up seven or eight in the second half. Was there anything during that, a couple turnovers, if you look back? COACH PITINO: I think Preston was exhausted and he just threw the ball away twice for no rhyme or reason. He's a very emotional kid. I think the altitude got to him a little bit. Like I tried to tell our guys, one time at Providence, the MVP of our region was our seventh man, Darrell Wright. Big guys, sometimes play certain players, don't have good games because the other team makes a concentrate effort on stopping the key guys. Peyton and Preston were key guys for us. They did a good job of stopping them. We shot 47% to their 37%, but we didn't block them out. You play great defense, give them a second shot. We make more threes, forced more turnovers. It all comes down to execution at the end and making free throws. We didn't do it. It was our weakness, our Achilles' heel all year. We congratulate Morehead on a great victory. Their a terrific team. Being in our state, we're really proud of them. Q. Can you reflect on the season as a whole now that it's over for you guys, comparing where you were predicted to be at the beginning. COACH PITINO: You know, it was a great season. You can look at all the glowing superlatives you want. That being said, you lose a heartbreaker. I could live with losing last year. They were much better, Cal. This is a tough one to lose. This is a tough one. So you sort of dwell on it. My window is closing in coaching. I said I could leave this year and be a happy man. And I could have with this team because they were just a sheer delight to coach the whole season. You always want to coach a team like this in your last years that you coach the game. Some coaches don't get that opportunity. I did. So I'm real proud of that. It's still a bitter ending to it. Q. It's real emotional for you right now, but are you thinking about walking away? COACH PITINO: No, that's not what I said. I said 'the last years of coaching.' I mean, I'm 58. I'm not going to coach forever. I'm just saying you want to go out with a team like this when you do go out. Every year I take some time off, reflect. I said, I could reflect and walk away and be very proud even though we lost in the first round. But that's not what I said. I said 'my last years of coaching,' plural. Q. How does Morehead State beat Louisville? Can you talk about how the talent is divided up? It's not quite the shocker that people might portray it to be? COACH PITINO: We knew it would be a very close game. We expected to win it. It's like this. You pick up a newspaper and score, you see Louisville wins again. You don't see that we don't have a player over 6'4" out of four guys and played with injuries. We've had injuries. You don't know who. You don't know what we've been playing with. You don't pay attention to breaking it down. I never had any illusions about this basketball team. Hard-nosed, tough working group much guys who were fun to coach. But we are what we are. We're just too small and unfortunately it's hurt us on the backboard all year. But we tried awfully hard to rebound. That's what you look for: great effort. Q. Outside of that block at the end, can you talk about Faried's impact on this game overall. COACH PITINO: You know, it's rare in this game. All coaches use the cliché that rebounders, every shot is a pass to you. He's the only one I've seen since Dennis Rodman truly make that statement true. He considers every shot. He tipped that ball on the free-throw line which could have ended the game. We fouled them, they made two free throws again. So he's a great rebounder. He's improved some of the other aspects of his game. He's still raw with his offensive skill level. He's done it against us, Ohio State, Florida State, averaging 17 rebounds, 18 rebounds, so that's pretty darn good. Q. You said you knew they were going to go for a three-pointer. You seemed upset that maybe your team wasn't playing as tight. Were you trying to force them to go inside? COACH PITINO: We just said we're not going to give up a three. He backed up fearing we were going to switch any pick-and-roll. We talked about switching out because we lost a game this year by not switching out. We talked about switching out. But sometimes instinctively a guy goes at you, you try to force him to his left hand, your feet get tangled. We knew they were going to take a three because they were holding it for the last shot. Why would you hold it unless you were going to take a three probably. But you're going to take the best shot available, and if a three is there, you can win the game. We talked about not losing it that way, but they did. He still had to make the shot, big shot, credit to him. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach. COACH PITINO: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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