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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: CHICAGO

March 18, 2011

Nick Leon

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Purdue Â– 65
St. Peter's - 43

GREG GREENWELL: We have St. Peter's head coach John Dunne along with student-athletes Ryan Bacon, Jeron Belin, Wesley Jenkins, and Nick Leon. We'll start with an opening statement from the head coach and then take questions from the student-athletes.
COACH DUNNE: You know, Purdue is very good. They have excellent skill with Johnson and Moore, who are both -- I thought we made Johnson work very hard, but he still made some tough ones. I thought Moore was just awesome.
And then they got really great role guys that make shots, that have a lot of toughness. You know, sometimes you hope in a 14-3 game they might overlook you and you can kind of get some rhythm early, but those guys came out to play. Their ball pressure basically is what hurt us, took us out of rhythm. When you get ball pressure like that, you have to make some plays off the bounce. Just unfortunately, we didn't have our best offensive night obviously.
So we tip our cap to them. But I'm really proud of these guys to my right because, even though we shot 29 percent and even though we didn't shoot the ball well, it's easy to kind of lay down and die and put your head down and not defend, but these guys, they left it all out there. They guarded for the most part for 40 minutes. And we just didn't play good enough on the offensive end.

Q. Jeron, Ryan, going up against JaJuan Johnson, I don't know how often you see a guy like that in your conference. He had 16 rebounds, probably created 10 more for his team. How difficult is it going inside against a guy like that?
JERON BELIN: He's a very good player. We normally don't face a player of his stature in our conference, but I thought we did a good job trying to make every basket hard for him. I mean, he's 6 for 16, so I think we did a pretty good job in that part.

Q. Coach and the four players, can maybe each of you talk a little about your emotions as all of the seniors came out of the game one by one. Your career is now over, what your emotions were then, what your emotions are now with it all coming to an end for you guys.
RYAN BACON: I think it's real, real, real emotional. It's even hard for me to speak right now. It's hard to believe that our senior year, the four hard years that we put in is over. We all stuck together through these last four years. It's hard. I don't know what to say.
JERON BELIN: It's just tough having a college career come to a tough loss like this, but I think the four of us will be playing somewhere. I think our basketball career is not done. Hopefully, we can play some more ball.
WESLEY JENKINS: For me, I think everyone is hurt from this loss, but if you look down the whole season, we had a good year. We won a MAC championship. So we really shouldn't have that much to put our head down about. It just hurts that your college career is over, but you got to look forward to the future now.
NICK LEON: It's hard for me to take this in. It's just a simple fact that you got -- some people don't know what we've been through, and we've been through a lot. We put our heart on that court today. Credit goes to Purdue and their players, but we deserve to be on that court. We definitely did deserve to be on that court. Just today wasn't our day.
It just hurts to know that our college careers is over, and we just got to move on. Sometimes you've got to move on. But at the end of the day, we're still champions. In our minds, we're still champions.
I'm just going to miss these guys. That's why I'm so emotional. It just hurts because, you know, we've been through a lot. It just hurts. You know what, we left it out there, and I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed of how we lost because we played hard.
I'll move on. We'll move on because, at the end of the day, like I said, we're champions.

Q. Nick, obviously, you guys didn't get off to the start you wanted. Can you put your finger on what didn't happen for you guys at the beginning of the game.
NICK LEON: Like Coach said, their ball pressure bothered us a little bit in the beginning of the game. We just went too fast. You know, the momentum, they speeded us up, and we didn't grab the momentum we wanted to grab in the beginning of the game.
So, you know, that deterred us to play different basketball than what St. Peter's plays. We played defense. We played hard. But they made some tough shots, and we missed shots, and that's just what happens sometimes. Sometimes, when you go out there, you don't plan to miss shots, but you got to take it how it is.
But we played hard. At the end of the day, we played hard. And we didn't give up. At the end of the day, we didn't give up. We played to the end.

Q. Coach, can you talk a little bit how Johnson defensively altered what you could do. It seemed like in the SEGD half it really resorted to a lot of jump shooting inside because he really just seemed to take away and redirect any time you tried to get inside against him.
COACH DUNNE: Just his weak side shot blocking, just they see him out of the corner of their eye. So maybe it makes them a little more antsy. Their ball pressure is so good, and then even when you do get by him, you have to drive the ball against good hard ball pressure is what you have to do. When you have a guy like Johnson waiting for you, it just maybe just makes you a little more antsy in your thinking about him as opposed to just playing.
We just didn't make enough disciplined plays off the dribble.

Q. Coach, anything they do surprise you or your guys? Or did you see enough on film that they sort of gave you what you thought was coming?
COACH DUNNE: No, they gave us exactly what we thought was coming. We knew we were going to have to score the ball. I was very confident going into the game that we would score the ball because we were playing at such a high level last week.
You know, if you told me we would hold Johnson 6 of 16, 4 for 6 from the line, I thought -- I would have liked our chances. But Moore, I thought in the first half -- obviously, they speeded us up. We completely played too fast, take some bad shots and some turnovers, maybe some nervousness early plus their pressure.
But we didn't put our heads down. Besides one or two open looks we gave them, I thought they really had to earn everything in the first half. And Moore made two tough shots off the bounce from behind the three-point line when we were kind of coming back and making a small run. I thought his kind of threes were like daggers a little bit there.
And they beat us off the bounce a little bit too much and got some open threes that way. But at the end of the day, I think they had 33 points in the first half. Unfortunately, we had 17.
Q. Coach, after playing Purdue, how good do you think this Purdue is? How far do you think they could realistically go?
COACH DUNNE: I mean, they're very good. I think they can go far. Johnson's awesome. I mean, he's good, man. You almost can't even double-team him because all his shots are little fadeaways, the jump hooks, the right shoulder turnarounds, and he makes them even when he's doubled.
Moore is excellent, probably the most efficient player that I've seen in a really long time. And then they got the ultimate role guys. I think, if they get hurt, it's going to be because of their depth. They need to stay out of foul trouble. If they stay out of foul trouble and their lack of depth doesn't hurt them, then I think they're really, really good. They've got a great shot.
GREG GREENWELL: Thank you, Coach.

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