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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: PHILADELPHIAMarch 22, 2013Mike BlackWill BrownJacob IatiPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Duke – 72  COACH BROWN: Congratulations to Duke. I've said it all week; in my opinion if Kelly is healthy I thought they were the best team in the country. Very proud of my guys. We really competed. They believed all week long that we were going to win this game, and we prepared the way we always prepare. We played with great toughness, great resiliency, like we have all year long, and I'm very happy for our University, very happy for our athletic department and our program. I thought these kids represented our institution and our program and the city of Albany in a very positive manner, and couldn't be prouder of them. Q. Was this a game where when you see a team with the experience of Duke, it kind of played well for them because every time you guys would get it close they'd do something to stretch it out a little bit and then make you have to work harder to get it back down again? MIKE BLACK: Yeah, definitely. You know, they're one of the top teams in the country for a reason. We battled, we had a loose ball at the end with a couple minutes left there. If we got it, it could have changed the game around, but we didn't, and that's credit to Duke, and they made the hustle play, and just credit to them. JACOB IATI: You know, they're Duke for a reason. They're good for a reason. They have great players all around you. So that experience, they play in big games all season long and their whole careers every game is like that for them. For us it's like the game of a lifetime, for them it's just another day in the park. But I thought we battled, we played to win the game. We didn't think we were just coming here to play Duke and go home. We were trying to win the game. We thought we really could and we believed in ourselves. I think we did a pretty good job of fighting until the end. Q. Jacob, when you guys got it to eight with 4:40 left, did you feel like that was your opportunity or were Curry and Plumlee just too much? JACOB IATI: No, the whole game we kept saying every media time‑out just hang around, hang around, we'll make a run. We just wanted to fight every possession. And hopefully there was that one‑minute stretch where we could knock down a couple of threes, get a couple stops and get right back in the game. We just want to hang around, hang around and hopefully they would make some mistakes and we could attack on them. The loose ball was probably the biggest play of the game. I thought I was going to get it, and right before I did, Plumlee tipped it a little bit and then ricochetted off me right to Curry. So I thought I could have had a loose ball, but I didn't. Q. Can you just sort of describe dealing with Seth today? I think Mike actually had a little bit of a quiet back and forth‑‑ it was almost like competitive chatter. MIKE BLACK: He's a great player. You know, he's at Duke for a reason. He made a lot of tough plays. He's a good player. The game plan was stop him. Obviously we didn't do too good of a job, so credit to him. He just made tough shots. We didn't let him get anything easy, just tried to force him into making tough shots. JACOB IATI: I mean, Curry is a great player. You have a guy like that you know he's going to score, you're not going to hold him scoreless, so just try to contain him and make him tough as tough a shots as you can. He played well today. It helps when you bank in a three, too. But he shot well, he made some nice plays and he's probably going to be an NBA player for a reason. He's really good. Q. Were there any surprises that Duke threw at you? They don't really have to throw any surprises, they can just be Duke and be dominating, but was there anything that they did that made you think they were even better in person? JACOB IATI: We were well prepared. Coach Brown and the coaching staff does a good job of getting us well prepared, understanding what they do on offense and what they do on defense. So I don't think there was anything they did in the game where we were like wow, what was that. We had an idea of what they were going to do, and we were well prepared, but when you play a team that just has better talent than you do, sometimes you come up short, but you just fight until the end. You try to execute the scouting report as good as you can. I thought we did a pretty good job of that for the most part. We were well prepared for the game. They didn't do anything that we didn't know was coming they just made a couple more plays than they did. MIKE BLACK: Iati pretty much said it all. Coach prepared us well. We knew their plays in and out. They were more athletic. Like Iati said, they have more talent, so that pretty much took its place. Q. What do you take away from this game? This is you guys' last game, and was this a memorable situation? JACOB IATI: I think we played as hard as we could. I think we left it all out on the floor. Personally I know I played as hard as I possibly could. I think we did a good job any time there was a loose ball diving on the floor, whatever you have to do. I think we did a good job of that. I'm proud of how we fought, and this is, I guess, as good of a way as you can go out rather than last year we lost on a tip‑in buzzer beater to someone in the America east. This one was a little bit better, we went down fighting to one of the best teams in the country. MIKE BLACK: We didn't back down to Duke, even though the jerseys said Duke. We gave it our all. We pressured them down the loose floor, got balls, made tough shots. I feel like they worked for us. Like Iati was saying, it's a lot better feeling than losing in the quarterfinals or the semifinals in the American East. Q. When you look at a guy like Plumlee and the advantage he has on the inside and then Curry from the outside, were those guys just virtually unstoppable for you? COACH BROWN: Well, you have to pick your poison. You know, you can't‑‑ it's hard, especially for us, to double‑team Plumlee. We were going to play him straight up and roll the dice. They shoot the three so well, and after watching that game against Miami where Kelly had 40, I had some bad migraines, and I'm like, you know what, if they're going to beat us, they're going to beat us with twos, they're not going to beat us with threes. They only attempted 11 threes, they made four. I think that's the big reason why we were able to hang around. Curry, he's their leading scorer. He's tremendous, and he's a rhythm guy. But I look at it as Plumlee did the best Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar imitation I've seen in a long time. He hit three sky hooks. I haven't even seen somebody attempt that shot in my 12 years at Albany, and he hit three of them. You know, and then Quinn Cook hits two ridiculous shots as the shot clock buzzer is going off, Curry is banking in threes. We made that team work. They had to make some tough plays and some tough shots. We held those two guys to 49. I think that's a good job. Q. Was this a situation where Duke's experience being in these type of situations kind of played into it? You made runs at them, but they're used to that, and then they would push it out further and then you've got to fight again just to get back close? COACH BROWN: Absolutely. I mean, look at the two teams. They're physically, athletically bigger than us at every single position. Our motto really has been to fight, scrape and claw. The problem is if you're playing another low major or mid major Division I program, you can probably get away with getting behind and coming back, getting behind and coming back. When you play an elite program, a team that's going to compete for a national title this year, you can't afford to get behind by 12, 13, 14 points. You know, Jacob Iati is going to work for J.P. Morgan next year and Mason Plumlee is going to the NBA, and it's like that at almost every position. I'm proud of my guys. We're a resilient group, a tough group, and I think they made an awful lot of people proud, and I can sit here and comfortably say we challenged Duke, we made them work, we made Duke beat us. Q. The two things you talked about, among others, for keys in this game were not to turn the ball over, and for the most part you did that, and you usually hit a lot more free throws. The game ended up very equal with the free throws, but for a long time there was quite a domination for Duke at the line. COACH BROWN: It's tough to make them if you don't get there. We throughout the year have made more free throws than our opponents have attempted, and that's something that we value. You have to find ways to get free points, and getting to the free‑throw line is a way to get free points. We've talked a lot this year about getting a piece of the paint, whether it's a post touch or a dribble penetration. It was going to be tough for us to get post touches against Duke, but I thought the way they pressured defensively we'd be able to turn the corner and get in the lane. It's just a matter of what decisions were we going to make when we got in the lane and when we did make that extra pass were we going to knock down shots. We had opportunities, and Jacob said it best, that one possession real, real late in the game, down eight, loose ball, our guys go to pick it up and he slips on a wet spot, and we were off to the races. I thought we had numbers, and Curry picks it up and lays it in. So instead of us having the ball down eight with a chance to cut it to five maybe, they get a lay‑up and push it up to 10. But let's face it, Duke is Duke for a reason. They're good. Q. Just on that kind of‑‑ did you guys feel like‑‑ were there times where if you could have gotten that one stop or that one three where the crowd would have gone nuts it might have ratcheted up the pressure on them? COACH BROWN: Our crowd was awesome I thought. They've been with us all year long and down the stretch throughout our conference tournament. Our crowd was great, and I thought our crowd was awesome today, as well. You know what I was most impressed with, did you hear the Duke crowd erupt on that loose ball at the end, that if we would have had I thought we'd be off to the races to cut it to five? They were worried. They were worried. It sounded like Burlington all over again when we were up in Vermont in the tournament championship game. That place just erupted when Duke scored that basket. It's hard, you can make runs‑‑ for us we can make runs at Duke but they're not going to be big runs. We're not an explosive offensive team to begin with. We've gotten to this point by playing tough, hard‑nosed basketball, playing unselfishly, defending, rebounding and finding ways to score. So we're not an offensive juggernaut by any means. So for us to come back or get behind 14, 15 points against Duke, we can cut it to seven or eight. It's hard for us to get it down to two or four, plus you've got to realize how we're playing, as well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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