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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2013Mick CroninJaquon ParkerCashmere WrightNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK GEORGETOWN - 62 COACH CRONIN: Give Georgetown credit. They played well. They played hard. Obviously, we struggled to score the basketball. Without fouling, we'd have held them to low 50s if we could have just played the game out, which should be enough to win the game or have a chance to win the game. We just really struggled on offense. Obviously S.K. didn't have a great game for him. Some of our other guys got to gain some confidence on the offensive end. But our effort was tremendous again, our effort is always tremendous, which I appreciate from our players. Tough to win when you can't get the ball in the basket. 38 shots isn't enough either. We only had 38 field goal attempts. Q. Coach, when you think about leaving the Big East conference and the split that's happening, is there sort of an extra sadness given that your game, the type of game your team has played, seems to dove tail so nicely with the way the Big East it switching. COACH CRONIN: To be honest with you, today would be the day that I wouldn't be real sad about it for certain reasons that I'm not going to discuss. The whole thing is tragic. The whole thing is tragic. I'll be quick and then move on. Nobody cares about student‑athletes. All anybody cares about is money. Everybody in the NCAA, in college administration, they talk about academics and student‑athletes. If people cared about student‑athletes, West Virginia wouldn't be in the Big 12 with ten teams flying 800 miles to their closest home game. That's really conducive to studying. The whole thing is a hypocrisy. But I'm part of it. I love doing what I do because I get to coach basketball, but I get to help these guys grow up and hopefully become better men, have a better chance at life, but the money has ruined it. If I was a fan, I'd be very disenchanted. Q. Mick, it's kind of a cliche to suggest you ran out of gas after you took that two‑point lead. It's just a matter of your offense couldn't score. COACH CRONIN: We're not a car. We didn't run out of gas. Couldn't score the ball. Too many guys‑‑ like I said, S.K. struggled. We didn't get much production other than two seniors. Q. Mick, you talk about the 38 shots not being enough. Yesterday you talked about playing faster. So some of the 38 shots were because of turnovers‑‑ COACH CRONIN: Turnovers didn't help. Definitely hurt us. Q. Was it the team didn't play fast enough? COACH CRONIN: Georgetown is a low possession game. They're going to work you deep in the clock. That's just what they do. That's why against them, the way they play, running the Princeton offense and being so deliberate, every possession gets magnified, which magnified every mistake. When you're in a close game against them, and it's a four‑point game, and Cheikh Mbodj turns down a four‑foot bank shot and charges and we cut it down to two, that's like a triple mistake against them. That's just a style of play where you get used to playing against them. Possessions get magnified just because there's fewer possessions when you play them in a game. Q. Mick, looking ahead, do you feel like you guys have done enough to make the NCAA Tournament? What's these next few days like waiting? COACH CRONIN: I don't think that's any question. If it is‑‑ again, I don't know how anybody could question that. Q. Do you feel like this week off is potentially good? COACH CRONIN: That's a good question. With getting guys healthy and getting fresh mentally, having gone last year to the championship game here and then having to beat Texas and Florida State and the NCAA made us play at 10:00 on Sunday night and bus home and get home at 6:00 in the morning and turn around and fly to Boston on Tuesday and play against a team you can play on Saturday an hour from home, that was a disadvantage. So I do think the team getting some rest could be an advantage. Obviously, the best teams will win, whoever plays the best. But we came here to win. It's not like I say, well, we're in the NCAA Tournament. We don't care. We wanted to win the Big East Championship. I don't like it when teams lose, and they say, well, it's no big deal. Next week is what matters. It was a big deal to us. No mistake. I do think it could help some teams to get some rest, in the Big East and the Big Ten especially. They're a very, very physical league, and the games are demanding on the kids. Q. JaQuon, could you talk about what got you guys going in the first half. You had a lot of trouble scoring at the start of the game, and Cash made a couple of threes. Is that what got you going? JAQUON PARKER: Yeah, it did. Whenever any one of us make some shots that do us should good on the defensive end, it gets everybody riled up, everybody gets to playing better, get to moving better. Like him making shots really helps us out. Q. Once you got the three, I think you went six minutes without scoring. Is there any reason for that, anything that you can attribute that to? You have these droughts a lot. Is it just a matter of not getting good shots? JAQUON PARKER: It's like Coach said, when you play against Georgetown, it's like limited possessions. When you actually get the ball, you've got to actually score. If you turn it over, it's magnified, exactly what he said. Q. How do you guys feel? Obviously, you don't feel good about it. Talk about going out this way your last Big East Tournament game. CASHMERE WRIGHT: It sucked. JAQUON PARKER: Yeah, it sucked. COACH CRONIN: Nobody's happy. We came to mean. Q. Cash, can you elaborate on that, what you're feeling now? CASHMERE WRIGHT: I'm like disappointed. I mean, when we got the lead, I felt like they just amped up their defense and just focused on certain players and just like baited you into doing things we regularly wouldn't do. And then we just weren't taking the open shots and trying to get better shots instead of taking the best shots. Q. Mick, what about the technical that you had? COACH CRONIN: It's ridiculous. Not on my part. Anybody who was around the court knows I simply said that's not a foul. That's not a technical for every coach in the country. I think we all know that. I worked with a guy that could have got a technical on every play. In the '90s. Q. Coach, if, as you say, college basketball is a hypocrisy, what could be done to reform it? Because the coaches want their money and the fans want to be entertained. COACH CRONIN: I wouldn't put it on the coaches. When I started coaching, I made $800 a month and drove 12 kids home in the back of a car with no grill every day. That's not why I got into coaching. I work 12 months a year. I have to raise $250,000 a year to run our program at the highest level so we can travel like other teams. The problem is there's not enough money for women's sports and Olympic sports. Your revenue sports, there's not enough money. The economy has trickled down. The states give less money to universities. Universities give less money to athletics. So everybody's just, well, let's change leagues because we can solve our money problems. And people that suffer are the student‑athletes. They're the ones that suffer. And the fans because, obviously, the tradition of what made college sports so special is really tradition. The fact that we're sitting here and this is the last Big East Tournament is beyond ridiculous. This is the greatest tradition in college athletics, this tournament, at one site for over 30‑something years. It's only gone for one reason, money. Money. But other people sit around and say it's about student‑athletes and the student‑athlete experience. Last year when we were told we had to bus home from Nashville and lose an hour and win a game and get home at 6:30 in the morning, but yet we had to be‑‑ we had to miss class and be on time for that press conference for the Sweet 16. I'm sure everybody was worried about my guys' academics right then. I don't anybody was worried about academics. I will talk offense to anybody talking about coaches because every coach I know got started off making peanuts. Q. Do you see‑‑ if there's not a hope of reform with things the way you've laid them out, do you see a need for players to be compensated? COACH CRONIN: Oh, there's no question players are being exploited. Football and basketball players are being exploited, there's no question about it. I used to be against it because I wouldn't want my guys thinking that a couple thousand dollars is a big deal because I talk to them all the time, somebody could give you $10,000, you're going to blow it in three months. I'm trying to give you a life where you can make real money with benefits and medical insurance and things. I try to explain to these guys, when they graduate and go off their parents' medical‑‑ these are things we talk about with these two guys. Cash is going to get a surgery when the season's over probably. You know, real life. These guys aren't just jerseys. So I wouldn't want them to get‑‑ I don't know if it's good to get confused thinking, hey, you're getting $3,000 a semester. That's really not going to change his life. He needs a degree so he can have a career when basketball is over, whether these two guys will probably end up coaching or whatever student‑athletes end up doing, they need a degree. So I was against anything that would make them not want to get their degree, make them think that I'm in college, I'm big time, I've got a scholarship, now I've got a little extra money. I don't know how you do it. I don't have the answer. If you tie it into graduation, make it an annuity, they get it when they're done, so maybe it can help them start off their life. I would be against anything that distracted them from the truth because giving them $5,000 a year for four years isn't going to change their life. I wouldn't want that to distract them from getting that degree because that's the most important thing for these kids, maturing and getting to a point where you can survive in the real world because there's stuff out there‑‑ unemployment and jobs, and it's not an easy country to be living in for these guys. They do‑‑ somehow they need to get something. Some way. Because everybody else is getting a lot of money. JOHN PAQUETTE: Thanks, Cincinnati. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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