|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Will CummingsQuenton DeCoseyFran DunphyMEMPHIS, TENNESSEE University of Central Florida: 94 THE MODERATOR: We will get started here now with Temple University, head Coach, Fran Dunphy, student athletes, Will Cummings and Quenton DeCosey. Coach we will start with you. COACH DUNPHY: Very proud of our team. I thought we hung in there as well as we possibly could and Don some really good things and obviously we made a few mistakes that hurt us a bit. I thought there were a couple of plays by then that I thought were critical. Obviously the jumper by Isaiah Sykes the end of the first buzzer, we didn't do a great job of defend that go and Staphon Blair's shot in the second overtime was critical where we had gone up 2 and they hit a jumper, I'm sure it was Calvin Newell and that put them up by 1 at that point. There were a couple of plays we need to do make and didn't. You gotta give UCF credit because they made the shots when they needed to. Got to give them credit, but proud of these guys. Q. Coach, this team went out the way that it played all season long and that was fighting until the clock hit zero. What does that say about your team right now, especially moving into next season? COACH DUNPHY: We talked about it half the game. I'm proud of their effort. There was never any quit in them. I thought their attitude through a challenging and trying season was very good. Was there frustration and disappointment on occasion, yeah, there sure was. But I thought they fought through it as well as you could possibly do. Again, I would tell you I like where we are, I like where we're headed and had I thought this particular group did about as good as they could do in a very challenging situation. Q. Guys, you were matching them offensively until that one stretch where you couldn't buy one for about six shots and a couple of turnovers. Anything they were doing defensively that was crossing you up, or run out of gas at that point? WILL CUMMINGS: In the second overtime? Q. 84‑82 to 89‑84. WILL CUMMINGS: I would say they did a good job of getting stops and taking us out of our offense. Credit to those guys they came up with big plays at the end of the game. Q. Stopping Isaiah Sykes was a problem all night long. WILL CUMMINGS: That, too. Q. What did he show you? WILL CUMMINGS: What we knew he could do, slacking to the basket, making plays, he was knocking out jump shots today and he got everything going early. He hurt us pretty bad. Q. Fran, did you have in mind to foul at the end of the first half? I know the clock was tight. COACH DUNPHY: You know what? I didn't. If I was going to burn another time‑out we would have talked about‑‑ we talked about in the previous time‑out that we had fouls to give but we wanted to keep Isaiah Sykes in front of us, if he's catching balls going back to the basket that would have been what we would have tried to do and Dalton Pepper said it at halftime, "I should have kept him in front of me" and I forgot to mention the big play, we were up 75‑70 Sykes made that critical jump shot that cut it to 2. He didn't make the foul shot but that was a huge jump shot. To answer your question, I would have rather kept everybody in front of us and not take a chance on a intentional foul or whatever, but if we had done what we needed to do, kept them in front of us, we would have been okay. Q. Will, Fran mentioned that he likes where the team is. Can you expand on that? Do you agree with that? Do you like where the team is after Quent's big night? WILL CUMMINGS: Definitely we are going to use this stuff that we learned from this year, sometimes we struggled just a bit on and get better as a group. We have "Q" right here, he's coming back next year, so we're going to hit him with some stuff some more and we have guys that didn't get a chance to play this year that were sitting out, so we're going add all those guys to the team and all those guys on the team right now that contributed this season, we're going to get better and start working when we get back to campus. Q. Quenton, you scored a career high 28 points. Despite the loss, do you think your game was on point? QUENTON DeCOSEY: Yeah, my teammates did a good job of looking for me and my shot was falling through. Q. Coach, you went with the same rotation of Will, Josh, Quenton, Pepper and Lee that rotation was on the floor for 20 minutes. COACH DUNPHY: Once we got late in the game typically that's what you would do because it's so tight and every possession is so critical and we stayed with that lineup throughout the overtimes as well. Q. Obviously you like the direction this team is taking. Defense would be an area that you have to step it up next year, is that correct? COACH DUNPHY: Yeah, we have talked about it certainly as a team and I have mentioned many times that it's the one thing that I think we need to spend so much time on it in the off‑season and get to better spots. I don't know that it's an effort thing, I think it's an anticipation things and we need to be better at it. We need a lot of work on our defensive play. We actually did a better job today than we have been doing in terms of shooting percentages and those kinds of things. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|