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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Andy EnfieldJulian JacobsLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Colorado – 59 THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement, and then questions for Julian Jacobs. COACH ENFIELD: I'm proud of our players. We played well enough defensively to win the game, but we didn't. Q. Can you take us through that last sequence? JULIAN JACOBS: Yeah, well, we were supposed to face guard on the out of bounds play, and, I guess, something happened and Scott got opened, so I just tried to recover and make a play. Then we picked up the loose ball and we got a good look with Wesley going down for the three‑point shot. Unfortunately it came up short. But like Coach said, we fought hard, but credit to Colorado. They're a good team. Q. Coach, could you elaborate a little on what happened at the end? COACH ENFIELD: You mean the last possession? The last possession we held them. They got a loose ball that was going out of bounds and threw it off our legs. They got the ball back. Thought we made a nice recovery defensive play. Julian, I think, got tackled during the mayhem, but we were able to get the ball out of it and push the ball down the court, and we got a clean look for a three. So can't fault our guys. They played that last possession about as well as you could, forced the turnover or blocked shot, and got a clean look to tie the game. So that was just one play out of the game, but there were many others. Q. Coach, the team shot 22 three‑pointers including a lot late down the stretch. Would you say that your overreliance on the perimeter and ultimately failing is the reason you lost the game? COACH ENFIELD: Yeah, it would have been nice to make one or two or three or four or five or six or seven. Pe'Shon was 1 for 9, J.T. was 1 for 4, and Julian was 1 for 4. Byron went 2 for 5. So it's been a weakness of ours all year. We need to get some guys to make shots. We ran down the stretch; we ran some great action, shared the ball and got some wide open looks and they didn't fall. Q. Can you talk about your initial feeling just this being the end of your first season at USC? COACH ENFIELD: Well, proud of our team. They played hard. I think you saw that today. They gave great effort. We played well enough defensively to win the game. Last week we went on the road and won our first road league game and also had a halftime lead in our other road game last week. This team has never quit, even though we haven't won a lot of games in the Pac‑12. Our coaching staff is very proud of their effort. They've had great practices and we've seen a lot of improvement with particular players. So I think the future is very bright looking forward. I'm very appreciative of how hard the seniors that will not be here next year, they worked. They'll have some great opportunities in a variety of different things, whether it's to continue their basketball career or in the business world. But for those returning and for those recruits coming in, we're very, very excited. Q. Besides effort the past few weeks, is there anything you saw that you could especially build off of going into next season? COACH ENFIELD: Julian Jacobs had nine assists against Washington State on the road. Against Washington, Nikola Jovanovic, our other freshman, had 21 points and 8 rebounds. They give great effort. They show up to practice, and they work on their games. I think you've seen them improve. They've played a lot of minutes this year as freshmen. We need those guys to develop quickly. They need to be a big part of our team next year. So, yeah, the development of certain players I think has been a really positive note for our team. Q. Byron was your leading scorer, and besides that three in the end, he had two shots in the last 7 or 8 minutes or so. Do you think you should have gone more to him down the stretch? COACH ENFIELD: Well, we ran a lot of plays for him, but this is a team game. You just can't take bad shots. I thought Byron played a very good overall offensive game where he didn't force. When it was there, he took it. But we called it about every play we ran the last seven or eight minutes for him. But he made some good decisions. He passed the ball when he had to twice, and he got wide open looks for his teammates. One went in, one didn't. He got to the foul line a few times, so you just can't rely on one guy to go 1 on 5 every time down the court, although we do call a lot of plays for Byron. Q. There is a span of about five minutes after you guys took the lead around the 9:00 minute mark where you guys went without making a field goal. What happened during that period? COACH ENFIELD: Well, it would be nice for someone to make a shot once in a while, and I say that jokingly. But we have to make open shots, and sometimes we go into stretches where we just missed wide open threes or‑‑ we missed two transition lay‑ups and a paint touch, so that's the frustrating part. Our guys get frustrated because they know they're playing pretty well, they just don't make the shot. That's what happened tonight. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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