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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: PITTSBURGHMarch 17, 2012Jim BoeheimScoop JardineKris JosephPITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA Syracuse – 75 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Syracuse coach and student‑athletes. Coach. COACH BOEHEIM: The second half, we made shots. We haven't done that lately. Our offense was not good in the first half. We had to pick it up on the offensive end. Our defense was very good the first half. We got killed on the boards. Second‑chance points I think were 12 of their 24. Second half we did a much better job on the boards. Our defense was still good. But the difference was Scoop started to get us going, made some shots, made some plays. I think we shot 66% in the second half. That's pretty good against a really good defensive team. It's been a while since we've knocked down shots like that. It just makes the game a lot easier when those shots go in. But we had good spacing. We just did a much better job of getting good shots in the second half than we did in the first half. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Scoop, you didn't have a great first half, a lot of turnovers, maybe two points. What happened at halftime? SCOOP JARDINE: I continued to be aggressive. I didn't let the turnovers bother me. I continued to be aggressive and try to make plays. Like coach always say, when you try to make plays, sometimes you gonna make bad ones. You got to forget about it, move on, still be aggressive. My teammates needed me. I was able to get my rhythm and make shots. Q. Do you feel like you played the way that No.1 seeds are supposed to play tonight? KRIS JOSEPH: Yeah, definitely. I think we picked it up on both ends of the floor, especially on the defensive end we got what we wanted. We were able to get transition baskets. There was a lot of space on the our offensive end. We got open shots, open looks, we knocked 'em down. This is the way I like us to play. Everyone was involved. The scoring balance, it was really balanced tonight. That's how we supposed to play. SCOOP JARDINE: How we supposed to play? We won. We won the game. It don't matter. It don't matter if we played good or bad. We won and advanced. That's what this tournament about. We saw a lot of upsets. A No. 2 lost to a No.15 seed. That's what this tournament is about. We don't worry about how we're playing, we just worry about getting the W. We advancing to the Sweet 16. That's all that matter when we get there, too. Q. Can you describe to me the scene at halftime. You really seemed to come out firing. SCOOP JARDINE: It was the same. You know, coach do all the talking (laughter). That's just it. One thing about this team, we don't get too high, we don't get too low. We stay right there. We been in a lot of games before. We didn't win games by accident. We all win games together, making plays. That's what we did in the second half. We came out, was winning the game. We made runs in the first half. We had some good things to do in the first half that we did. We wasn't too low on ourselves. We knew if we came out in the second half, rebounded, we knew we would win the game. That's what we did. We helped our big fellas rebound, Rakeem, and Kris, and James, they came out with a better effort on the board. That allowed us to push the lead a lot further. Q. Kris, what does it mean for you when the guy to your left played the way he did in the second half? KRIS JOSEPH: Uhm, that's how we need him to play. It was all about senior leadership tonight. He showed a lot of that, showed a lot of character. I told him at halftime, Thank God for two halves of basketball. He had a chance to redeem himself. He did a great job. He took care of the ball. He knocked down shots and made plays for others on the basketball court. SCOOP JARDINE: I thought I was playing good in the first half (smiling). COACH BOEHEIM: You always do (smiling). Q. When Henriquez got that third foul, do you feel that's when the game started to turn? KRIS JOSEPH: No. We were getting good drives to the basket the whole game. I think because they're so overly aggressive on the help side, it gave us a chance to get to the basket opportunities. With him being out there, that just eliminated a shot‑blocker and kind of put our guards at ease knowing there's not no one to really block the shot or change the shot. We were getting drives the whole game, that opened up a lot of things for us on the offensive end. Q. Kris, Jim mentioned that the way you guys shot is better than you have in a long time. Is this the best that you guys have felt about the way that the team played in a while? KRIS JOSEPH: I mean, yeah, in a while. Offense was really flowing tonight. That's one thing we haven't really been doing on the offensive end. We were kind of standing still in the past. Tonight I think we got a lot of movement, which gave us open shots and we knocked them down. It's all a rhythm thing. James got in a rhythm, Scoop in the second half got in a rhythm. That's what we want to see.  We don't want to take contested shots. We want to easy, open shots. That's what we got. SCOOP JARDINE: This is the first team that played us man‑to‑man in a while. We been seeing a lot of zone. We seen the man and our eyes lit up. THE MODERATOR:  Thank you, gentlemen. We'll continue with questions for Coach Boeheim. Q. You mentioned the other day you stuck with C.J. for a little while, then went with James. Today looked like a similar situation. How do you plan on addressing the forward rotation going into the Sweet 16? COACH BOEHEIM: Same way we are right now. Same exact way. No change. Q. C.J. will start until he proves otherwise and you'll go from there? COACH BOEHEIM: He will start. He hasn't improved too much lately, but he'll start. I got to lot of confidence in him. I know he'll get going ‑ soon, I hope. Q. Your bench scored 33 points. Kansas State's bench zero. Talk about the blessing it is to have the depth you have on your team. COACH BOEHEIM: It's key. For a long time was Dion and C.J.  Maybe if we put him back on the bench, he'd go back to getting 10 or 12 points. Now James is coming in there and doing that. Dion has been very good all year, very steady. You know, we've said all year, we think we've got seven guys that can start. Certainly the way James is playing now, and Dion is playing, they're arguably as good as most starters on most teams. Q. The other day you said you've never had a good team that didn't have a good point guard. Could you talk about Scoop and the game he had tonight. COACH BOEHEIM: Well, you know, the first half, in spite of what he may think, he really struggled. He made some bad decisions. You know, I don't know what he was doing on a couple of those plays. And we struggled. You know, we're a point guard‑oriented offense. Especially when you play a team like Kansas State. They take away your wing passes, so you really have to do stuff off the dribble. You're not going to pass the ball around against them. It's not the way you attack their defense. We wanted Brandon or Scoop or Dion to try to use the dribble to get in the lane and make plays from there. We really couldn't do that very well in the first half. But generally defenses are better in the first half, and they loosen up a little bit in the second half as a general rule. You know, we spread 'em out a little bit and were able to get dribble‑penetration against them. The one time they switched to the zone, Brandon made a great penetration and kick and Scoop hit the three. Teams that don't play zone when you hit a three on them, they go back to man‑to‑man. It's an automatic. It's automatic. But, you know, we hit some shots. Early in the year, a lot of people discounted our win at NC State. I think NC State is proving they're a pretty good basketball team. We beat them down there by 15 or 16, whatever it was. They shot, if I'm not mistaken, 52% or 53% from the field, and 58% or 60% from the three‑point line against us down there, or close to those numbers. They shot a great percentage and we won by a big number. You know, we haven't really shot the ball that well. A little bit here and there. But we really haven't shot the ball that well. You know, basketball can be a simple game. When you make some shots from the perimeter, it just changes things completely. But the key was our defense. We kept them on the perimeter. McGruder is good at getting in the lane. He got in there a couple times. For the most part we kept him outside the lane. We wanted their big guys to get a lot of shots, and they did. We figured they're not going to make a high percentage. If they're shooting it, they're not rebounding it. So I think that's what we were attempting to do, not let their three‑point shooters get set up. Then when they tried to dribble penetrate, we wanted to make sure we didn't let them get in there too much. But defense was very good. It was very good tonight. Q. How about Rakeem, second half especially. COACH BOEHEIM: Rakeem was tremendous. He really was. He was tremendous. He's just kind of figuring it out. He's a very athletic, big guy. I think the last probably five or six weeks, he's been playing more at center in practice, working more inside, inside game, inside drill work. I think he's getting better all the time. He's a very raw talent. You know, he really is better and more comfortable at center. Early in the year we didn't play him there. You know, now that he gets that opportunity, he's ready. And Baye did a good job when he was in there, too. We feel we have two guys that can go in there and battle and accomplish some things. But for us to be good, and it's been true all year, our perimeter guys got to play well. We're a perimeter team. You know, Scoop, Brandon, Dion, Kris, they've got to play for us. Then if James or C.J. step it up, that's another weapon. I thought Brandon, even though he didn't score, he was aggressive today. He got in the lane. He was physical. His defense was very good, so... But that's the key for us, our perimeter guys. Q. You have had three pretty tightly contested halves this tournament. Do you think that helps you going forward? COACH BOEHEIM: Three this tournament? I thought we just played two games. Q. Halves. COACH BOEHEIM: Oh, halves, okay. Well, we've had a lot of tightly contested halves in this season. So we've been pretty tested our last few games in the league, really most of 'em other than a very few were very tightly contested games. We're used to playing in that situation. That doesn't mean you're always going to make the right plays. But, you know, yesterday we had to make some free throws, we did, or the day before. We had to make some plays at the end of that game. James hit a big shot. You know, again, you have to give Asheville a tremendous amount of credit. They were a very, very good team. The fact that we didn't win by a lot doesn't mean that we didn't play well. I mean, we obviously could have played better. But you're going to have games like that in this tournament. We won the national championship, and we were down 25‑8 against Oklahoma State. So you're going to have games like that where you've got to come back, got to find a way to get back in there. That's just the way the tournament is. It's more so than before. Even the 16 seeds are pretty good. 15 seeds are really good teams. If you watch those two games yesterday, you saw two really good teams. You didn't see two 2 seeds play badly. I'm sure they'll say they could have played better. That's probably true. But the 15 seeds played really, really well. You know, that's what college basketball is, I guess. You know, I tell our players all the time, If you don't play well in this tournament, you're out. Doesn't matter what seed you are or where you're playing. If you don't play well, you're going to be going home. Q. When Henriquez went to the bench with three fouls, how do you feel your team capitalized on that? COACH BOEHEIM: I think we got a drive or two in there when he was out. I think it made a difference. Then they got him back in. But then we were able to get James to come out and get the open three because the big guys don't leave the basket area. So, you know, you get a little advantage inside. Then when he's back in, we got the open looks from the three, because they had their two big guys back in there. Yeah, he's a very good shot‑blocker. You know, I thought for the most part we negated him today. We wanted to go right at him, you know, try to get him to foul. But he's long. He's very long. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. COACH BOEHEIM: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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