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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: OMAHAMarch 16, 2012Eli HolmanRay McCallumOMAHA, NEBRASKA Kansas – 65 THE MODERATOR: University of Detroit, Eli Holman and Ray McCallum represent the student body. Coach Ray McCallum is here and we are going to ask him to make a statement. COACH McCALLUM: Well, I'm proud of my guys. We played one of the truly great teams in the country tonight. I mean, that pretty much tells the story. Kansas is a great defensive team and their ability to lock us up on the perimeter really was a big key. I'm proud of our guys, we gave a great effort and we had an outstanding season. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the athletes. Q. Ray, did you guys gain any pregame inspiration from what had transpired earlier in the day with 15 seeds beating 2's? RAY McCALLUM: Yeah, Eli and I are roommates, and once we saw them getting upset we thought that could be us and all our team watched it and before the game tonight we heard that Duke got upset by Lehigh and we wanted that to be us. Unfortunately it didn't happen but proud of my team for fightin' hard and for the year we had. Q. Eli, can you talk about what's going through your mind right now, has it hit you yet or is it something that maybe won't hit you for a while? ELI HOLMAN: It hit me as soon as the final horn went off that I'm done as a college athlete, and I think I went out the best way I possibly can with Coach Ray McCallum, following him, and "little Ray" bonding with him over the years, and my team had my back and unfortunately I didn't want to go home this way but it is what it is. I went out against one of the top teams in the country, "bigs" in the country, so it's hitin' me pretty hard right now. Q. Eli, the thought of Thomas Robinson, what was he like inside, was he stronger than you thought, quicker than you thought, what was his game like? ELI HOLMAN: Thomas Robinson is a great overall player, knowing where he is at on the floor, his rebounding, he's a vocal leader out on the floor and that's very big for the team. The team looks to him when everything takes a turn for the worse and he controls traffic so he's a great player. Q. Ray, when you guys went up 21‑19, Doug had that big dunk, they took a time‑out, what were you guys talking about in the huddle there as far as continuing the momentum? They seemed to take it and run from there. RAY McCALLUM: That was a big play for us and it really got the gym up on their feet and I think that really gave us momentum. Anytime Doug gets a dunk we feed off that and coming into the time‑out guys were energized and excited and everyone was saying "stay calm, keep fightin'" and next thing you know it's 27‑21 and they came out to a good run out of that time‑out. I think right there, you know, if we could have just got some stops and kept feedin' off that dunk it would have helped us a little bit more. But me not makin' shots, I didn't help my team in that way. I'll take the blame for the loss, coming into this game. I didn't have a good game and from my numbers you can see my shooting percentage wasn't there. I didn't do enough defensive plays to help my team but we fought and enjoyed it. Q. Ray, you're coming back again, obviously. What do you take from this experience? How do you grow? What's the next step here? RAY McCALLUM: This was big for us, you know, going through the season with all the things that we had to go through. We had to fight through adversity, guys gettin' hurt and then, you know, we figured out how to play together as a team. We figured out how important defense is for our team to win and we learned how to win a championship and that was our overall goal this year and to get to the NCAA Tournament. Coming back this next year we have to get everybody involved, get 'em in the pack, teach 'em how to be champions and my job is to lead the team and being the experienced guy. I've been in college then for three years so just got to be sure I lead and use this as an experience, make sure we get back here next year and now we know what it takes to win a game here. Q. Ray, there was a stretch where your team made 2 out of 22 field goal tries, it was a 15‑minute stretch. Coach was saying they were lockin' you down on the perimeter. Was it more than that? Were they cutting you off, seemed like when you got to the basket there was a lot of traffic. RAY McCALLUM: They do a great job of not letting you get in the paint. That's one of my strengths, get to the hole and finish or pull up and kick it to an open guy. I know some of my shots were contested but I felt like I got good looks. It was just one of those days the ball didn't go in for me and I couldn't have a game like that for us to win and unfortunately I just didn't make the shots that I needed to make tonight. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. We'll dismiss you. Questions for Coach Ray McCallum. Q. Ray, there was a couple of times you were calling time‑outs in the stretch that they were making their run. Did you feel like you were getting the shots you wanted, were you changing anything offensively, were you overloaded on one side? COACH McCALLUM: You know what, we couldn't score. We had 10 turnovers, the first half, we haven't done that all year and their game plan was to come out and get after us on the perimeter and challenge us and we couldn't shake Jason free, they were there on the catch with him. They got through our screens, he's our best outside shooter so you took him away, then Chase got a couple of fouls, slowed him down and tried to work him and out through the first half. Ten turnovers affected us the first half. You've got to get good shots. You can't turn the ball over against a team like this. I thought our rebounding effort was good for the most part, we just had trouble scoring. Even in the second half when we wanted to try to get back in and make a run we had good looks and opportunities but couldn't make a basket. I tell our guys if we make layups and free‑throws, you know, that leads to victories, and we were 6 for 11 the first half and left too many points on the board there and we had good looks around the basket where we didn't score. You look at the final score, this is a team that can score 80 points without a problem. You've got to be able to make baskets and we couldn't put the ball in the basket tonight. Q. Coach, talk about what Doug was able to do offensively. Seemed like he was one of the only guys who could put it in the basket. COACH McCALLUM: Coming in we told Doug he was going to have to attack, he was giving away a lot ofinches. He was one of the guys that was aggressive, he attacked him, got to the free‑throw line, made athletic plays, and when you go against a team like Kansas they're athletic with their size and you could see he was one of the guys that fit in a ballgame like this. With his athletic ability and all. Q. Coach, where do you go from here with the program? Where does this lead to? COACH McCALLUM: Well our goal was to build and try and win a championship, and we play in an outstanding conference, the Horizon League is a great basketball league and we're really proud of being able to follow up and win a championship and you look at what Butler has accomplished the last two years being the conference champion, so you know the quality of our conference. To follow up a championship from them is just showing us that we're on the right track and moving in the right direction. We are right where we want to be. THE MODERATOR: Ray, thank you very much for your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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