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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Larry KrystkowiakDakarai TuckerDelon WrightLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Utah – 67 THE MODERATOR: Coach, a summary and then questions for the student‑athletes. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, as I looked at the box score, pretty fine line. There are a lot of statistics real similar other than maybe rebounding. I thought that's where we had a little bit of an advantage. I think a nine‑rebound differential. But kind of the tale of two halves, I thought. We had a tremendous amount of energy in the first half, got stops, held Washington down, I believe, to 24 first half points and then we came out in the second half a little bit flat as our team has been known to do. The key, I thought, was getting back into it after a timeout. We were down 1 and made some plays, hit some shots when we needed to and we've got some big time stops. Our kids played just about as well as they could defensively, including the rebounding from start to finish. There was that little stretch where Washington started to chip into the lead and I think there were six points, six straight points in transition. If we can keep them out of transition, that was a real solid night for us. As you see, they only had five assists. So we were doing something right defensively, and it was fun to recapture that momentum and hold on to the lead. These guys made some big plays next to me. Q. Dakarai, this is one of the only games of the season that you went without sleeves and obviously our corner three is your shot. What was going through your mind when Jordan gave you that pass and just kind of how big was that shot? Just kind of recant that shot for us? DAKARAI TUCKER: It was actually big for me. I was just thinking about going back to my fundamentals, have my elbow in and put my arc in the ball. Me and Coach worked on shooting with arc and I had to put more arc on it, and that's all I was thinking about. Putting more arc on the ball and going back to my fundamentals. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: If I could add to that, I spoke to our team after the game. I thought that might have been the play of the game. We watched our film against Stanford, and we've got a lot of faith in Jordan, but one of the points of emphasis this week was people are going to collapse and over‑rotate to you, and people will say maybe he's struggling. That's been a point of discussion in Salt Lake, at least, the expectations have been so high. The fact of the matter is at this point in the season you're not going to be able to make a lot of plays. They're going to make you make the extra pass. We've talked about it for two days, Monday, Tuesday. We talked about it on the board before the game was that was going to be the difference is somebody having the trust and faith in the teammate to give up what was‑‑ and Jordan could have shot that. It would have been considered a good shot, and he made a great pass to the corner for Dakarai. I thought it was really fitting and on cue for our team. Obviously, moving forward we'll need to do it collectively. We don't have individual players. I think the strength of our team has been the team, and it couldn't have happened at a better time. Q. When Princeton picked up his fourth foul, you put in Dakarai there. Was that a move because Princeton had that fourth foul? Was that to get it to Dakarai to hit that outside shot at the end of the game? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Yeah, it didn't have much to do with foul trouble. I believe in Dakarai an awful lot. We spent some time in the Bay Area, I think it was St. Mary's gym, working on some shots and some confidence, trying to build some confidence as he talked about with his elbow in. I had one of those similar experiences a year ago with Jarred DuBois and he hit a big shot, if you remember, against Cal in the semis or quarterfinals, I guess it was. We needed a shooter on the floor and an offensive possession to spread it out. Princeton brings a heck of a lot to the table, but perimeter shooting is not one of them. I thought that opened up the floor. The floor was spaced. They couldn't pack off of anybody, and he stepped right up and on cue. Q. Delon, you've been in almost every game this year. Had some late‑game collapses. When they took the lead with 1:30 left, anything that was said in the huddle or how did you guys regroup and get that lead back? What was different this time as opposed to some of the other times you've had troubles? DELON WRIGHT: I think we just kind of stayed aggressive, and we wanted to get a good shot of Stanford. Our last couple possessions we had some poor shots, so we wanted to get a good shot. I think Jordan got fouled by cutting through the Lane, so he knocked down his free throws, so that helped. Q. Delon, the team came out a little flat to start the second half. You kind of turned it on and started attacking the basket. Was it something that the defense was doing, just giving you more looks or were you just determined to take over the game? DELON WRIGHT: No, I think I just saw some open lanes, so I tried to attack. It worked out for me. So I just tried to stay aggressive because they were kind of packing the lane in, so I just tried to see the opportunity and I kind of took it. Q. You went heavy to Jeremy Olsen in the second half and you were down on Bachynski. What was the thought process behind that? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Jeremy over Dallin? I thought we put Jeremy in a tough situation. He's probably our best scorer in the post. We kept throwing the ball in the second half off the lane line, and it put him in a tough way. We've never thrown extended post catches to Jeremy. So part of it wasn't his fault. He had some turnovers. But I just like the fact that Jeremy was rebounding the basketball at the defensive end. A lot of times maybe right about the time we would make the shift, throw Dallin in there, it would be for rebounding and defense, and I thought Jeremy was doing an adequate job collecting some defensive rebounds for us. Those two I think may be two completely different players in terms of some offensive ability and defensive ability. I thought we needed a little bit of punch maybe riding with Jeremy a little bit longer on the offensive end. Dallin got in some foul trouble as well, so we had to be careful early on with that. Q. Delon, you've faced Arizona two times this year. What is your focus going into this game tomorrow knowing that they've had a day of rest? What are you expecting to do? DELON WRIGHT: As a team? Q. Yes, sorry. DELON WRIGHT: I think we have to rebound. They're one of the top teams in our conference in rebounding. They all crash. I think if we rebound and play good team basketball, we'll have a chance. Q. Dakarai, can you just talk about your shot and how that one ranked as one of the biggest shots of your life? DAKARAI TUCKER: Yeah, this season, it was the biggest shot for me. Just coming in and, like I said, just using my fundamentals and giving an extra booth for that last section four segments, just having us coming out, that was really a big shot. Q. Just give us a rundown on what you think was the main keys to your victory tonight? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I really think we were locked in defensively. We had a couple different zones that we played throughout the course of the night. C.J. Wilcox is such a good basketball player. You leave that guy open, I think he's probably our best shooter in the league, pure shooter, though we're facing another one tomorrow in Nick Johnson, which is a little spooky. But I think C.J., that's what he wants to do. So we switched a lot of guys out in a normal situation where they'd set a big on little screen, down screen to try to get him open. We took the chance on switching out with some of our bigs and not letting him catch on rhythm. I think, you know, looking at the stats for Washington to have five assists, I think that would probably be the story line for the game is we didn't maybe let their offense run on the cylinders. I watched them. They had a clinic against Oregon State. There's been a number of teams when they opened up league play this year at Arizona State that was an absolute clinic offensively. We put a lot of pressure on leads and turns, and as I said, we just tried to keep the ball out of C.J.'s hands as best as we could. Q. Coach, what have you learned the first two times playing Arizona about what it takes for your team to execute offensively because they're such a fine defensive team? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, Arizona, you look statistically is without a doubt the best defensive team in our league. They hold teams to percentages that are not really in the same neighborhood as a lot of the other 11 teams, points scored. They're real physical. They're solid. I think Sean, Coach Miller, they talk a lot. They've obviously got offensive fire power, but that's what's making them an elite team in college basketball this year is you have a really talented group that's committed to playing defense. So first go around in Arizona, we absolutely got pounded on the glass. I think it was maybe 20 points, offensive rebounds. We couldn't keep them off the glass. Actually, a little bit of an eye‑opening situation for us. We spent a couple weeks working on rebounding. It takes a lot of things. There are certain guys that need to block out. There are certain guys that maybe just need to go get the ball, but there are a lot of 50‑50 balls, and I think some of it is a mindset. It's a little bit of an eye‑opening loss for us there. We got them to miss shots, but we just couldn't keep them‑‑ it looked pretty good on paper. We held them to 33%, but they were 1 for 3 every time they went down the floor, and they ended up scoring on their second offensive rebound. That's just Russian roulette. That will kill you every time. I thought second time around we focused on the glass. We actually won the rebounding game, missed some free throws going down the stretch, and had some costly turnovers. We've been close in both games. Actually, we've been close in three years, as I told our team. It's the one team in the Pac‑12 that we've not won a basketball game against, and we got a lot of booby prizes along the way, consolation prizes and atta‑boys and way to go. You competed with them. But we've been close both times this year. We've been close in four previous games. We've got to figure it out, and we'll look at a lot of film tonight. The good news is it's just after two 2:00; so, we have got the rest of the day. A year ago we were playing later in the evening and kind of scrambling. Not sure exactly you how it was going to go, but we're familiar with them. Hopefully we can make the plays necessary to compete and get a W. Q. Coach, what kind of pressure was your team under as they came into this game? What do you think their demeanor will be as they take on Arizona? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I don't know about pressure. You know, everybody in the room knows we've had an awful lot of close losses, been in some ballgames. I'm not a big fan of being the favorite in any game. I've always liked the underdog role. I think this game, not that I pay attention to point spreads and that kind of thing, obviously for reasons that are known to you guys. But I don't like being the favorite. I don't think our guys like being the favorite. We had an opportunity, I thought, maybe to do what we should have done in a number of games this year. You get a lead and you've got to be able to put your foot on the throttle moving forward. Q. What was the demeanor heading into Arizona? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Oh, demeanor. That's what I was black and blueing about is we're obviously not the favorite against Arizona. We should come out fighting and be ready to compete against a really good basketball team. There are a lot of Arizona fans that come. It's the school, I think, that travels as well as anybody. There will be a lot of anticipation for it, and here we are, as we have been in the previous games against them, the underdog. So I like that element. I don't have nearly the nervous feeling that I maybe had leading into this game, and hopefully our guys are feeling the same thing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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