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MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 22, 2011Antonio BartonJosh PastnerAdonis ThomasLAHAINA, HAWAII Memphis – 99 THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you'd like to start off with opening comments. COACH PASTNER: Yes. Just a couple of things. First of all, I was extremely proud of our guys to be able to come back. It's not easy to do that. We lost a tough game yesterday morning. Kind of our psyche was a little down. And so to be able to get back up to play a really, really good Tennessee team, who is extremely well coached, I mean, they play hard and they're well‑coached. They've got good players, too. Anyone who thought Tennessee was going to be down was wrong on that. I have to give a shoutout to my man Coach Dave Odom over there. After the game he said, The most important thing is you gotta let this one go. Because as coaching, you sometimes get so attached to each game, and Coach understands that, and after a win or lose. And he says, You've got to let that one go and get your troops ready for the next day. And he was right. And last night we watched the film of the Michigan game. And not anything negative, just for an instruction to allow us to get better in some different areas. And then we focused on Tennessee. So really proud of the guys. We battled. We had the lead late in regulation. We didn't obviously finish it out in regulation. But that's basketball, which I believe is a game of energy. It's a game of runs. We had some chances. Tennessee made some big shots. And then the first overtime momentum swung to them. We got down 4. But, again, we battled. We fought through it. And we found ways to get back and tie the game and then go into the second overtime. Again, the same thing. We were down but we found a way to take the lead and made the plays we had to toward the end. Anytime you can win and get some lessons out of it about finishing the game. There was a couple of things, we had the one lane violation, and we also had, the last thing, where the officials made the right call. I think we celebrated a tad bit early. And I'm pretty anal about covering everything in practice on late‑game situations, and that's something that I hadn't covered. So that will be something that we'll cover and we're able to get a win out of it. It's a good lesson. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. Questions? Q. Coach, just talk about having the lead, the huge run. I think you go up 40‑24 and it's looking like you may run off with it. What happened there, and what did Tennessee do right to get back in the game? COACH PASTNER: What happened is Tennessee's a good team. It's not like we were playing our exhibition games where, hey, you're just about to blow them out and win by 30 or 40. Tennessee is in the SEC. They've got really good players. I mean, I don't want to‑‑ I'm really bad with names. So, I mean, the kid No. 34 is just a stud. And he played really well. So they've got good players. So anytime you have a team with good players‑‑ like I said, basketball is a game of energy, is a game of runs, that's going to happen. That's normal. Teams are going to come back. And they did but we found ways to win it. Something for us to learn when we have a team down, we can't let them creep back in. But I thought even when they were making runs and we played well. I just thought Tennessee played well. I thought both teams played well. I thought both teams were scoring. It was just‑‑ I didn't feel we were playing bad at any time. I felt we were playing well and Tennessee was, like I said, they're a really good basketball team. Q. Can you just talk about your defense on Trae Golden in particular? He carried the team from the perimeter, looked like you guys had a plan to shut down his penetration and find him. COACH PASTNER: I thought we did a good job on the perimeter defensively, especially with all the perimeter guys. Again, they've got‑‑ I keep saying this because I felt once Coach Pearl left, everyone felt, man, Tennessee wasn't going to be any good. And anyone that listened to me, I was telling everyone they're a good team and they have good, good players left. They've got good players. And I know the success that Coach Martin had at Missouri State, and he can flat out coach. I recognized they were going to be good. And they were going to be a tough team. There's no question about that. So we had to do a job on the perimeter because you couldn't just focus on one guy. I mean, they had multiple weapons, and we did a nice job perimeter‑wise defensively. But, again, the biggest thing for us, I know it's off base, your question, just our rebounds, that's our biggest areas. We've got to be better on the glass. I mean, the three things we talked about going into this season is we gotta take care of the ball better, which last year we were 290th in the country. Our first two games, we had single digit turnovers. This game we had 12, which isn't bad, for 50 minutes. We've done a great job of that. We've done a great job of taking away the 3‑point shot. Yesterday, Michigan, we held them to 30percent. Today we held Tennessee to 33. But the third thing we've got to be better at, which we talked about, is rebounding, which we weren't good at last year, defensive rebounding, and that obviously we've got to be 100 times better than that. And the guards, all the guards. It's not just the bigs, the guards had to stick their nose in there, we've gotta come up with those balls. The two guys next to me, Antonio and Adonis, they both played terrific and played hard and really stepped up and both guys were in attack mode and played at a high level. Q. A little bit more about the two guys next to you. Really tough matchup for Adonis in there against those bigs when your bigs were in foul trouble. And A.B., just shot after shot, this guy gets it done for you. COACH PASTNER: Yeah, Antonio really stepped up, hit big shots. Even the big shot, the great pass Stan had to him underneath, which was a big bucket. Antonio hit the other big shot on the baseline after the post entry feed from Wesley, and obviously hit some big 3s. And Adonis was in attack mode. I told Adonis towards the end, that play where he spun, he could have just driven the ball and he spun back into the traffic. And I want him to continue to be aggressive, to be on attack, because he's a hard matchup, whether it's a two‑man guarding him, three‑man guarding him, four‑man guard, he's a hard matchup because he's a multi‑dimensional guy. Both these guys really stepped up. The other thing on Will Barton, I was proud of Will today, because we had a long talk last night. And one of the things we talked about was, like versus Belmont, he was seven of eight from 2s. And he didn't settle for 3s. He shot four 3s, but he was one of four.  Today he took 17 shots and only two of them were 3s. And he hit a big 3 at one point. But he didn't settle for 3s. He's a great type of player when he curls and gets into the paint. That's his best basketball. Plus he had 11 rebounds tonight which is really, really good. Q. Adonis, can you talk about the transition now from the man on a high school team to coming off the bench now from Memphis, and personally what that transition's been like for you? ADONIS THOMAS: I wanted to come in and make an impact, whether I started or whether I came off the bench. I know Coach recruited me as coming in as a freshman to get things done. Whether I start or continue to come off the bench is just me coming in and playing hard and being tough when I get in. Q. Can you talk about the way you played, and then the shot, I guess 1:07, 1:06 left in double overtime, what's the difference there? ANTONIO BARTON: Just coming out like Adonis said, coming off the bench, is enough to bring the spot, because sometimes you're down, sometimes we gotta come in, bring things up. That's what we did today. That shot, we practice that all the time in practice. And I just felt it that Wes was going to find me, and I was going to be a little separated from my man. So I just let it go and it went in. Q. How are the legs? COACH PASTNER: Again, it's kind of like the analogy: We had to play three games in the conference tournament last year. Able to win that. Played a late game, then a morning game. Also with‑‑ I mean, these guys, the way I look at it sometimes as coaches we overanalyze all the stuff. These guys want to play. They want to hoop. They want to ball. So I don't think we put too much emphasis on it. The main thing is they rest. They get plenty of fluids, as much as they can to hydrate. And other than that, once we get going tomorrow, they gotta be ready to produce and compete, because the team we play, Georgetown or Chaminade, they're going to go through the same thing. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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