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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2014Dallin BachynskiLarry KrystkowiakPrinceton OnwasLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Arizona – 71 THE MODERATOR: Coach, I don't think anyone quite expected what happened. What did happen? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, we got punched in the mouth by a really good basketball team, and we saw Arizona, I think at their finest. Defensively it was really, really hard, obviously, for us to score, and they were geared up. That's why they lead our leg in defensive statistics. They took a lot of pride in guarding us. They were much more physical than we were, and got out in a number of transition points, turnovers, and errored shots. But that was a really dominant team that I think is going to be advancing far, hopefully for all of our sakes and the league's strength and so forth, that they represent our league. I think they can go really far. As I told the players, that's where we want to be. We're a long way away from that caliber of team. It's really unfortunate. The timing is bad for us to end this way. We had one game at UCLA where they got on a roll in the second half and it felt similar to how this game felt tonight. But for the most part we've played 30.5 games without really having that feeling. We've been in a lot of ballgames, and they just took the life out of us. I think a lot of the credit goes to their team, and we've obviously got things, if we're fortunate enough to play, it's the postseason potentially NIT, we've got some things we're going to learn from it. But, again, all the credit goes to them. They were well‑prepared, and we saw why they were a top‑ranked team all season. Q. Dallin and Princeton, could you just talk about the offensive struggles in the first half that kind of set the tone for the game? Was it more their defense? Were you getting the shots that you wanted off? DALLIN BACHYNSKI: Well, they were really putting on a defensive clinic in the first half. For us to score only 13 points, you can't really shoot that bad. You've got to play at least some to Arizona's defense. Of Course some shots that we know we could hit were not falling, but the majority of it was their defense. PRINCETON ONWAS: Apparently they must have watched the Stanford film, so they just pressured us outside and disrupted our offense and gave us shots that we didn't really want to take. Q. Princeton, you were a lot more aggressive than we've seen you all season. Was that because you weren't getting shots off? Or what was your mindset to how aggressive you were? PRINCETON ONWAS: Delon, they were just crowding him and double teaming him. So when I got the ball, I tried to help him out by just being aggressive. Q. Dallin and Princeton, how tough is it going to be to get over this loss? Or are you able to say, hey, it's one in the loss column, that's it. Or is this the kind of thing that's going to really stick with you? PRINCETON ONWAS: No, we'll scratch this loss. Teams lose all the time. We'll just get ready for our next practice and get better as a team. DALLIN BACHYNSKI: Yeah, we're going to spend, I think we're going to spend the rest of the day with family and recharge their batteries a little bit and get ready for the next game. Once we can get home and get home and get to practice, we're going to have to forget about this, learn from it, but forget the feeling that we have right now in our gut. Q. Dallin, you said it was a clinic out there. What did you see specifically? What were they doing specifically that made it so tough to score? DALLIN BACHYNSKI: Well, they took us out of our offense. They made it difficult to swing the ball. They really put pressure on pick‑and‑roll and made it difficult for the guards, especially, to either come off and make a play or come off and look to score. So just the amount of pressure that they put on us as well as having the help side there when the guard was able to get over. They were able to stop the first as well as the second pass. Q. I'm curious how you treat this game? Do you dismiss it or hold it up as a reality check or just what for the program? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I see it as a great challenge for where we need to be. That's a team that's reached the pinnacle of college basketball and got some great players on it. As I told our team today, we had to be really good to be competitive against them, and we weren't. We were sub‑par in a lot of categories, offensively, defensively, and, you know, it's not‑‑ We've got a resilient group of guys and our coaching staff is the same way. I've said it a million times. You've heard it in Salt Lake, you're never as good as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are. So we try to avoid the extremes. If we're rolling and we win three in a row, you're certainly not as good as you think you are, because you're only as good as your next game. We lost the game and we got pounded. But we're a resilient group and it's one game, and we chalk it up. I think in my mind, anyway, and I shared with the team, it's a little bit of a vision of where we need to be. Where, if we want to be good, we've got to be a lot better and more physical and so forth. So some of that lies on our coaching staff. I'll tell you, I was looking through the play sheets and trying to figure out what it is we were going to guard and what it is we were going to run, and I can't say I was really optimistic that a whole lot was going to work. It's a good example of what really being committed to defense does for you when you have an ultra‑talented group offensively and athletically, and I think that's why Arizona is where they are. So for us, it's a little bit a barometer of where we need to go and a wake‑up call, but it's certainly not anything too extreme. Q. Did you ever think you'd see a day where Jordan, Brandon, and Delon combined 1 of 16, just one bucket? Were you trying to keep them positive and continue to attack? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, again, we tried. It was really hard to create a lot of positive vibes. It was, maybe we could have a game like that against some teams, but you can't have that kind of production against an Arizona and expect to be sitting here feeling anything other than the way we feel. Again, it's disappointing that we've been competitive all year and it's a bad way to end the tournament. But we'll continue to persevere, which is one of our words, our keywords with our culture. I thought our kids competed, at least, to the end, some of our young kids. I'm still a firm believer and always have been that everything happens for a reason, and this is part of the process for us. It's over. Time to move on. Q. Can you talk about what adjustments you made as you saw the game start to get away from your team early in the first half? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I mean, pick‑and‑roll‑wise, when we played at Salt Lake City we were pretty functional with pick‑and‑roll. I think Coach Miller's wise, and they put a lot more heat on us in some of that pick‑and‑roll action, jumping us with our bigs. We turned it over a number of times and fuelled them. Our adjustments were to run more screening actions that didn't involve pick‑and‑roll. Still at the end of the day we needed to come off and make jump shots off doubles or single pin downs or throw the ball at the post, and they were doing a terrific job guarding screens away from the basketball as well. And we certainly didn't get any post established. They got some physical guys down there and made it hard. So, as I said, we could adjust all we want. The adjustments really needed to come in our offense. Halftime was 34 points, I think, for them, which is not off the charts, compared to when you consider the fact that we had a number of turnovers that fuelled their break. We just didn't have anything in our playbook that really could counter act the kind of emphasis they were placing on playing D. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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