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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Khyle MarshallBrandon MillerNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Seton Hall - 51 COACH BRANDON MILLER: I love the resiliency in our guys. I love the toughness in our guys in order to come back in that game. I thought there were multiple times when we could have easily given up, lay down; we didn't. We fought. Like I told our guys, there's some nights that just aren't your night. We struggled to shoot the ball in the basket. We struggled to connect on passes late game. We struggled to make the plays that we needed to make in order to win a game like that. But I give a lot of credit to Seton Hall, the way they played. Coached well, played well, and they got us tonight. Q. Brandon, how difficult was it offensively when you couldn't get Kellen or Alex to get anything to fall? COACH BRANDON MILLER: They struggled. And, again, Seton Hall did a good job of staying on Kellen. They knew where he was at all times during the zone. K.D. did a pretty good job of moving without the ball, at the same time, they had an awareness of where he was. A couple times late in the game, when he did get good looks, he hadn't gotten a look like that in a while; threw him out of his rhythm. And then Alex has played as well as he has in his entire career over the last two games. Just didn't make a shot. He had some looks. Looks didn't go in tonight. Q. Coach, can you talk about that final play (no microphone). COACH BRANDON MILLER: They put a guy on the ball, and then they allowed the ball to be entered, as long as it was in the backcourt, and then they wanted to keep the ball in front of them and make us shoot over the top. Didn't know whether they were going to pressure and make it hard for us to inbound the ball, but they allowed us to inbound the ball. We got a half‑court shot, and it didn't go in. Q. Khyle, a senior never enters his last game thinking "This could be my last game," but when the final shot didn't go in, what went through your mind? KHYLE MARSHALL: I can't believe it's over. It hit me pretty hard, knowing that this could possibly be my last game in a Butler uniform, but I got to give credit to our guys. They fought the whole game, all 40 minutes, even when we were down, down double digits late in the second half. They continued to fight, and they continued to fight. I couldn't have been more proud of my guys tonight. But once the ball didn't go in, I was just in disbelief. Q. Coach, what do you think Seton Hall did differently tonight in comparison to the last game of the season on Saturday? COACH BRANDON MILLER: The number one thing is they didn't lose Kellen Dunham on defense, especially early in the game. They had a much better awareness of where he was. They extended their zone out further than probably what they normally extend. That would be the biggest difference. Q. Coach, at the end of your first year as the head of the program, how do you see it going forward? KHYLE MARSHALL: To look back on this year, I love the fact that we played our best basketball towards the end of the season. I thought we really‑‑ I thought we improved. We have a lot of good pieces in our program right now. We have good pieces coming in. I love the strides that we made. Obviously, I like the improvement, but I understand that we're not where we need to be right now. We need to continue to get better. But I do think we're heading in the right direction and going the right way. Q. Coach, now that you've been through the full season in the Big East, what are your thoughts? COACH BRANDON MILLER: It's a very strong league. I don't know how many leagues can say that their 7 seed in the tournament has the wins that our 7 seed in our tournament has. When you think of Georgetown and who they played and who they've beaten, you could‑‑ I don't know how many teams will ultimately get in the NCAA Tournament, but you could argue that seven of the teams, depending on how they play, might possibly could get in. Obviously, we're not going to get all seven because all seven can't win, but all seven are right there and talked about to be one of those teams. So that's 70 percent of your league playing at that type of a level. There's not a day where you have a guaranteed win, no matter who you play. You go into venues that are hard to play and get road wins, but from top to bottom, obviously, it's a very competitive league. Q. Khyle, did you ever let yourself think a couple free throws here, a couple close games there‑‑ you guys had a couple of close overtime games early on‑‑ this could have been entirely different? KHYLE MARSHALL: No. We can't look at one specific thing that got us behind at all. There's multiple plays where we could have did something here, something there, but you can't really put it on one particular play where something happened. Throughout the game, no one ever plays a perfect game. So you can't really blame it on particularly one thing. All I know is our guys fought for 40 minutes, and we had a chance to win. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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