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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2014Semaj ChristonDee DavisChris MackNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Xavier – 68 COACH CHRIS MACK: Obviously, tournament play, you can't celebrate a win too long because we'll be right back here in 21 hours, but I'm tremendously proud not only of these three guys here but the rest of those kids in the locker room. We battled. We played one of the most physical teams in our conference. They were senior laden. I have a lot of respect for how hard they play and how hard they compete. But I just thought our guys played tough throughout. We got knocked on our heel to start the game, but we responded. To have Dee out there limping around, you know Isaiah's limping around, Matt Stainbrook pulling a Willis Reed, I honestly didn't think he was going to play four hours ago. Again, just a great team effort. We move on to play a really good team in Creighton tomorrow night. Q. Chris, can you talk about Matt? What changed your mind and allowed him to come into the game tonight? COACH CHRIS MACK: I just had it in my mind that he wasn't playing for the last ten days. I'm not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. These guys will tell you Matt hasn't practiced. He's never been around. He's in the training room. We knew he's working hard. He's very diligent in his approach. As the week sort of wore in, David Fluker said, Matt wants to warm up on the day of the game shootaround. I said okay. When we shot this morning, he looked pretty good. Again, we're going half speed for the most part in shootaround. But then as we're going back to the hotel, Fluke said, he wants to play. I said, "Well, I want him to play too," but it's not my call. The doctor said he was cleared, and so we were going to use him as much as we could without overusing him. He did a great job. Q. Chris, again, this is a team that certainly has been, I guess, kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde type. Tonight you certainly put on the gas against a tough team like Marquette. These three gentlemen to the right, how big were their roles? It seems like these guys had different types of roles but very key roles. COACH CHRIS MACK: We really tried to spread Marquette apart. They're so big. Otule and Gardner are two of the biggest post players we play all year. At times they're on the floor together. We tried to spread the floor out as much as we could. Semaj and Dee did a great job on ball screen situations. And you have Justin out there, who can really attack a close‑out and space the floor out with his shooting ability, not to mention down the stretch each of these guys hitting free throws. It's a big night. But I would challenge you on the Jekyll and Hyde. We play in a really, really tough conference. We won 20 games. We lost 9 of them without Matt. Matt goes down at Seton Hall and we are down 18‑16. We play in a very tough conference. Our kids are resilient. They're not perfect, but we're good. Q. There are those that believe this win is going to push you into the NCAA Tournament. COACH CHRIS MACK: I like those people. Q. Do you come into a tournament like this and have any idea about, hey, we should try to do this, we want to do this to improve the resume? Or is it one game at a time and see where the chips fall? COACH CHRIS MACK: Probably everything you talked about. These guys are smart kids. You know, what am I going to tell them, don't worry about it? It has nothing to do with NCAA. They have Twitter. They have Instagram. They know what's at stake. But I'd also tell you that every time we play a game from day one, from game one up until tonight, we always wrote the four letters in the top right of the white board that said "NCAA" because deep down that's been a goal of these guys. We weren't there a year ago. Justin and Dee got to experience it as freshmen. Semaj has yet to be in one, and that's a goal we had all year long. They knew what was at stake, and I'm glad we battled for it. Q. Jake Thomas was a thorn in your side the first two games, 11 three‑pointers, but tonight only had one. What were you guys able to do to neutralize him tonight? COACH CHRIS MACK: We mixed up our defense between zone and man. Tonight we probably did the best job playing zone than we did all year. Early on, it probably scared our guys a little bit because we were getting so many high post catches, and Burton was diving to the rim. But we never gave up both. We never gave up Burton diving to the rim and high post plays and circle‑up threes by Jake Thomas. I think it surprised their big guys because they were more on an island than they've ever been in zone. Then man‑to‑man, Dee will tell you some of the shots that Jake Thomas hit in game one and game two, you can't do anything about that. He made a lot of those all year. He's coming off, staggers on one foot. Sometimes you've got to tip your cap, but I felt tonight we were just as locked in as we've been. Q. Chris, you guys have Creighton tomorrow night. How do you go about defending a player of Doug McDermott's caliber? COACH CHRIS MACK: We just shut him down (laughter). We don't let him catch the ball or shoot a three. I mean, you know, you just try your best, play as hard as you can. You try to deny his catches. You try to load to the ball. You try to contest his shots. And when you swallow a couple threes, you can't think it's the end of the world. He scored 3,000 points for a reason, but we beat him one time, we lost to him one time. In both games he had 20‑plus points. We've just got to play their five, not their one, and do as good of a job on the defensive end as we can. Q. Semaj, I watched you, of course, play since you were at Brewster Academy. You were one of the best high school players in the country. You come to a school with a great tradition in basketball. What has been the transition of coming from the Atlantic 10 to a great conference like the Big East? SEMAJ CHRISTON: I just think the league is more physical, bigger and stronger. Other than that, every night you're going to have a tough game, home or away. Q. Do you feel this is a good example of what this conference is about against a tough team like Marquette? SEMAJ CHRISTON: Every night is going to be a big game. You've got to be ready. Q. Dee, three assists, no turnovers. A huge part of the game was turnovers coming into it, knowing you had 19 against Marquette last time. Will you talk about that aspect of the game and how important it was to take care of the ball tonight. DEE DAVIS: That's what we practiced over for the last three days is making sure we were strong with the ball. Really personally, I felt like we tried to carry it over. But as a team, I felt like we did that as well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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