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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2012Jess CarrDorian GreenTim MilesLAS VEGAS, NEVADA San Diego State – 79 Colorado State – 69 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Colorado State. Coach, if we could start with you, just get some general remarks on tonight's game. COACH MILES: Well, I congratulate SanDiego State. I thought they played a good floor game. Thought defensively their big lineup was hard for us to operate against. They deserved to win the game. We looked just a little step slow tonight to me. You can't be a step slow against SanDiego State. You know, it was a tough loss, difficult. Always difficult to end your, you know, journey short of your destination, but we'll live to see another day, I hope. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll take questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Could you talk about, other than their size, was SanDiego State doing anything on defense that you had not seen? DORIAN GREEN: They were switching a lot of screens. We just kind of got off attack. When we got to the free‑throw line 13 times, we were 11‑13, but we just kind of got off attack. We settled for jump shots in the second half. Q. Jesse, it seemed like they made you guys work so hard to even get up a shot. Did it feel that way? JESSE CARR: Yeah, I mean, coach mentioned their size, their length. I think we kind of let it get to us a little bit. We gave up a lot of offensive rebounds. Like you said, once we got in the lane, it was tough to get up an easy shot. They did a good job of making sure we didn't get easy shots and just contesting everything. Q. Describe the difference between that first half you had last night against TCU and this second half you had tonight against SanDiego State. DORIAN GREEN: I think it just comes down to us not being as aggressive as we were yesterday. I think we were kind of letting them dictate a little the things we were doing offensively. We gave up too many offensive rebounds and we weren't getting as many stops as we did yesterday. Yeah, we just need to be more aggressive. Q. Now you guys are done having chances to impress the selection committee. Are you comfortable where you're at now? JESSE CARR: Obviously we came in the tournament with the goal that we wanted to win the tournament. We felt we could. We really believed that we were going to. Like coach said, it's tough that we fell short of our journey. But we've been working hard all year. I hope the journey doesn't end now because I know this team has a lot more to give come post‑season play. Q. How do you think the pretty much pro‑SanDiego State crowd affected you guys? DORIAN GREEN: We expected that. They have a good following, so we knew it was going to be like that. As far as affecting us, I don't think it did too much to us. I think it definitely gave them some momentum and they fed off of it. But that's something that we expected coming into the game. Q. It seemed like you were hitting so many threes in the first half. The ones you were taking in the second half, were they just as good and not falling or were you taking a different style three‑point shot? DORIAN GREEN: I think we rushed some. I think we just needed to do a better job of attacking. In the first half, we were getting easy threes because we were on attack a little bit more. When we get fouled, we play a lot better. We can definitely hit threes, but we need to get to the basket and, what we say, love the rim. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student‑athletes at this time and continue with questions for Coach Miles. Q. In yesterday's press conference you described the idea of trying to defend against Jamaal Franklin as a nightmare. Today you held him down pretty well but he scored a game‑high 19. COACH MILES: We got him in foul trouble, that helped. He hit threes. That's not a great strength of his. So I thought he took advantage‑‑ he took what the defense gave him. Certainly it's hard to stop his drive. He's crafty at getting fouled. And then he steps up and makes threes. So now you have a real problem on your hand. You have to credit him for finding a way to be really, you know, effective in limited time. But, you know, I thought that was a big thing. When he stepped up and made those three threes, you kind of go, This is bad, this is not good. Q. We talked about your team not being able to attack inside. Do you credit SanDiego State's defense collapsing more or is that your team not being aggressive enough? COACH MILES: We have 30 paint points. Out of 70 points, for us, that's not bad. We had 50 last night. We find ways to score inside if we move inside and drive closeouts. The problem tonight was foul line. I think Ken Pomeroy is here. Ken, I don't know if you do the Ken Pom stuff, but it's an outstanding site. If there's a smoking gun to my offense, it appears to me is free throw rate. The last two times we played SanDiego State, we shot more threes than free throws. We shot the ball really well at their place. If we don't get to the foul consistently we have a real problem for our offense. I thought you saw that tonight. It's not so much scoring inside, it's where you get your easy baskets, offensive rebounds, transition, foul line. I thought that SanDiego State went big. Not everybody goes big against us. I thought that was a good move. I thought we struggled with that some. But the more thing is we just didn't get fouled. I thought that was a bigger problem tonight. Then I thought with their size, too, they were on the offensive glass. They got 11 of their 28 misses, whatever it is, 10 of their 28 misses. I don't know the number on that, but it's too much. Those two things hurt us. Q. How much was the back‑to‑back games an effect on your players? COACH MILES: I thought we looked slow. My wife was yelling at me to make sure and stretch 'em out, get the lactic acid out of them. She's a physical therapist. Stretch, I told our trainer. I thought we looked slow. I thought our lack of depth hurt us. As a coach, you're a general manager, too, in college basketball, so you got nobody to blame but yourself when you don't have depth. Greg's injury affected us because his length and athleticism can really help in a game like this. He was better today, but he just couldn't go. I don't know if he'll be able to go tomorrow, but he'd be ready to go next week. Q. What are the next two days going to be like for you? COACH MILES: Long. Really long. It's out of your control. It's going to be long. Q. This is a point when coaches usually make their plea. COACH MILES: We've made our case. We don't pass the eye test, the smell test, the airport test. We don't pass any test. Put me on the floor and let these guys compete and we'll see. You know, yeah, we made our case. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH MILES: Thanks. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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