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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: SAN ANTONIO

March 25, 2011

Chris Singleton

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

VCU Â– 72
Florida State - 71 OT

THE MODERATOR: We have on the dais head coach Leonard Hamilton joined by Derwin Kitchen. We'll ask Coach Hamilton to open us up with a statement.
COACH HAMILTON: I thought we dug a hole for ourselves in the first half, about nine point blank missed layups. I was disappointed we were only down five points. When we had 14 off of rebounds and nine layups that we just couldn't complete. Then the first half to be only down five, I felt pretty good. Defensively we had a hard time handling their ball screens, and that's probably what we've done the best all year. We did not get to their three point shooters, and obviously we knew going into the game that they were an extremely good three-point shooting team. And they went 12 of 26, 45 percent from the three.
And you've got to give them credit because they executed their game plan and knocked down some shots, even though they had some good looks, they knocked them down, and that's to their credit.
I thought toward the end of the game we had a great opportunity there toward the end. Derwin thought he fumbled the ball and didn't feel real comfortable taking the shot, and we didn't get a great shot off at the end. You've got to give Virginia Commonwealth the credit. They're a scrappy team. They kept us at bay despite the whole game. We closed the gap toward the end and came up one play short. On the out-of-bounds play we thought we had every possibility covered as the clock was running down, and one of their players broke free and obviously finished the basket. And there lies a one-point loss. I think they did a very good job in just making the plays they had to make there at the end of the game to win.

Q. Derwin, can you take us through what happened both at the end of regulation and at the end of overtime?
DERWIN KITCHEN: I was calling for Bernard to come set screen at the end of regulation. I know if Chris would set it I would switch one to four. So I misjudged the clock and didn't realize how much time was left and didn't get a shot up. That was poor judgment on my part. And at the end of overtime I split the defenders, I fumbled the ball a little bit, so I didn't have a good shot. So I thought we had enough time and if I passed it we'd get a good enough shot, but we ran out of time.

Q. Chris, talk about the defense in the final seven minutes and really most of the overtime, you kind of clamped them down. What changed, what allowed you to get back in the game?
CHRIS SINGLETON: We had a chance to go down by ten when Joey Rodriguez was at the line. He missed two free throws and came down and scored. And before that there was a timeout, we knew the only way to get back in the game with seven minutes to go. We knew we had to rely on our defense to get stops to try to execute on the offense.
And overtime, I mean, coach said that we didn't play defense the first part of the game. You really saw our defense come into play in the last ten minutes in overtime. They made shots when they needed it, when time was running down on the clock, they made the shot.

Q. Can you put into words how you're feeling right now, the run you made, it comes to an end in this way?
DERWIN KITCHEN: For me this was my last game. So I'm kind of devastated. I wanted to keep it going as long as possible, and my college career, basically that last second shot, you feel pretty bad.
But overall I'm happy for my teammates. I'm happy for what we were able to accomplish this year for the program. I'm happy for the coaches and everybody. But for me to end my senior year like this, it feels kind of bad.

Q. On that inbounds play you did seem to have everything covered and then Burgess got open. Were you shocked to see him that open?
DERWIN KITCHEN: It was a mistake on me. I was guarding Burgess and I turned my head the wrong way and he slipped, not knowing that the basket was going to be wide open. I thought we had somebody under. But I turned my head the wrong way and he slipped and he got a clean look at the basket.

Q. Chris, this is obviously the most action you've seen in an while. How did it feel early on and how much of a green light did you have to play?
CHRIS SINGLETON: I felt great. Just being able to play and help my team out. I just got to thank God to be able to come back and be out here. And I was just trying to stick to it, for five, six weeks now, trying to get back on the court. It was a dream come true to just make this final. From the very beginning before the season started I told everybody, we go to the Final Four, I told every -- I told every newspaper if we go to the Final Four, when our team can play, I feel like we're one of the best in the country.

Q. It's always a delicate balance when to call time outs, when not to. Did you think at the end of regulation or at the end of overtime to call a timeout?
COACH HAMILTON: At the end of regulation that was a long timeout. We called the play we wanted to run if the score was tied or if we had a one-point lead. And so we had given them the definite instructions. So to call timeout to give them an opportunity to set the defense as opposed to coming down the floor under those circumstances, I'm not really sure it would have been to our advantage.
At the end of regulation there was seven seconds on the clock. I felt very comfortable with Bernard just setting the ball screen. Derwin is probably one of our best free throw shooters. They were covering our shooters all night out wide, and he split them and got the ball just where I thought he would have gotten it. I'm not real sure. Had we called timeout we could have gotten the ball wide open on a four, five foot open jump shot or opportunity to attack the basket any better.
We work on that an awful lot in practice. It's what to do in those circumstances. And I felt very comfortable that we almost got what we expected to get. Unfortunately when he come off the ball screen he thought he fumbled the ball a little bit and he didn't want to take a fumbled shot. And that's just kind of the luck of the draw. If they had called timeout we very well could -- they could have switched and gone to zone and maybe would not have had as good an opportunity as we would have had then. You work on those things on a weekly basis so that when the game is going down like that, you don't have to make a whole lot of adjustments.

Q. Can you talk about the performance Derwin had tonight and what he's meant to this program and for it to come down to those two possessions?
COACH HAMILTON: Derwin has really grown not only as a basketball player but as a student-athlete. He had a lot of challenges in his journey to become a Division I basketball player. I've known Derwin for a long time. I recruited him out of high school. He's such a great youngster. Sometimes as a coach you see where you might help a youngster, giving some direction, and help provide him with the wisdom, the knowledge and opportunity to improve his quality of life. Derwin was so humble and so hungry and really wanted to come back and go to school in this state, and I thought we would be a good match for each other.
So it's especially tough. Not many youngsters would try to shoulder the blame or the responsibility of a loss. The truth of the matter is -- and we've been a pretty good interior team and a pretty good offensive rebounding team -- to get 21 offensive rebounds, and shoot 30 percent -- 36 percent from the floor, it just was one of those nights where we couldn't get the ball to go inside. When you get 21 offensive rebounds you think you're going to get to the free throw line a lot more than 18 times. I go back and watch the film, I'm not sure how much of a factor their defensive schemes had in us missing those shots.
But the law of average, we should have at least had an opportunity to make several of them. So I'm not real sure had we not executed those fundamentals in the first half maybe the game wouldn't have gone down to the wire like that. But Derwin, admittedly, he's accepting the responsibility for a couple miscues. That tells you the kind of maturity he has and the type of young man he's become. He's become our leader. He's kind of the quarterback who gets the praise and sometimes get the blame, like the head coach. But for him to shoulder that, that just says a lot about him and how much he's grown to articulate that. It means an awful lot to him to be the first youngster in his family to get his degree. He really cherishes that. And I'm sure he's going to be successful at life as he moves forward from here on.

Q. How were they able to shoot such a high percentage against you that you've held other teams in check in the tournament all season long? How were they able to do that?
COACH HAMILTON: In the first place they hit some really tough shots, some shots when they were heavily contested. A percentage of those shots I didn't think we did a very good job of getting hands in their faces. A couple of shots they hit that were almost from the parking lot. They were way beyond NBA range, maybe three or four of them was almost out-of-bounds.
But they are, for that kind of a shooting team, we had a clear understanding of that coming in. I think it's a combination of them being good three point shooters, a combination of them making some tough shots. And also I didn't think that it was one of our better nights in terms of defending the ball screen and getting back to their shooters. And there lies a 12 of 26 from three, 46 percent from the three point line. Sometimes you have to give teams credit. They had to make those threes. And every time we gave them an opportunity they cashed in. Whenever we made a mistake they made us play. But even when we were playing good defense and contested the shots, they made those threes, good three-point shooting team.

Q. Can you put in perspective the season ending this way and what the season has meant to you and the program?
COACH HAMILTON: We thought all along that we had potential to go not only to the Sweet 16 but farther than we did. We had some challenges with this team. There are some skills that we need to improve on in order for us to be maybe quite as efficient as we would like to be. But that's kind of who we are. With the lack of skills in some areas we've had to take the team and the talents that we have and develop a scheme that would give us a chance to win. We're following the guys coming and going, sometimes we sputtered, but we always seemed to bounce back. With each setback I think we kind of grew in character. With each time that we didn't perform up to our capabilities, I thought they became closer together as a team.
That's kind of part of the journey, when you develop a program and you want to take your program to new heights, sometimes you have to grow from some of your struggles. I do believe that we have, the last six years in our program, that we've got ourselves on solid ground. I would love to be a lot further along, but I feel very confident that with the experience that we had this year, the wisdom that we gained from some of the mistakes we made and also the wisdom that we gained from the successes that we had I think will give us a lot of information to come back next year and pick up where we left off and move our program even another step higher.
Most of these kids are coming back. We have five seniors on our team next year. We have a good recruiting class coming in. We feel confident. We got off to a 2012 momentum. So I think that we're taking the step farther in the right direction each year and I expect us to move our program even farther next year.

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