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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2014Johnny DawkinsJosh HuestisDwight PowellLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Stanford – 79 THE MODERATOR: Another piece to the Pac‑12 tournament puzzle. Coach Dawkins, could you give us an assessment? COACH DAWKINS:  Well, I think we beat a good team tonight. I thought our guys came out and played right from the start, and I think we continued to 40 minutes. I think it's one of the best efforts I've seen in this half this season. We put everything together on both ends of the floor. You give them credit. They're a tough team. They made runs at us, but our guys showed a lot of poise, a lot of maturity. They withstood the runs and were able to to build momentum. Q. When did you get the impression or did you that it was just your night? Was there any point in the game where you said okay, we've got it going? COACH DAWKINS: Yeah, when it was about 30 seconds on the shot clock or 30 seconds on the game clock. I never feel that way. This game turns so fast. It's such ebbs and flows that you have to stay locked in, and we try to keep our kids focused all the time. Anytime, especially a team like Arizona State, they're the best three‑point shooting team in our conference, and they can get hot and they can knock them down. We really wanted to stay focused on that the entire game. I thought our guys did a really good job of that. Q. How'd you guys keep ASU from having any success down low in the paint and really eliminating Jordan Bachynski? COACH DAWKINS: I give a lot of credit to our big guys. Part of our game plan is what he's able to do in the low post. I thought our guys fought and executed very well. We made it as difficult as possible. He's a pro player. So all you can do is make it as difficult as possible for him. I thought our guys did that. I'm just really proud of the effort. Every big man that came in really contributed. Q. Coach, how were you guys able to stop Jahii Carson? I know he got point there's in the end, but scoreless in the first half. COACH DAWKINS: Well, I tell our guys this all the time. It's hard to stop a great player. You want to contain them. I thought our guys did a great job focusing on what we needed to do to slow them down. And I give a lot of credit to Anthony Brown who was his primary defender. Anthony really took the challenge, guys switched on him like Josh and Dwight. They continued the focus that Anthony had, and I think it really helped that those guys understood how good he was. He's had a lot of success against us in the past, and I thought they stepped up and made it difficult for them tonight. Q. Dwight, can you talk about how aggressive you guys were at both ends of the floor? It seemed that you looked like a team that wanted to keep playing in this thing for a while? DWIGHT POWELL: Yeah, that's been one of our focuses in preparation is to be aggressive and bring the fight to them. We know they're a great team, and we knew they were going to bring the fight to us. They got the win the last time we played them at their place, and they were going to come out confident and aggressive. So we definitely we had to match that intensity and try to exceed it and come aggressive on our end. Q. Back‑to‑back games you had slow halves, but in the second half you stepped up and set the tone down there in the paint. What were you doing at halftime or before the game where you're having slow starts and coming in after the half and really playing well? DWIGHT POWELL: I think the first half today was a bad decision on a couple reaches. That hurt me a lot, obviously sat down a bit. Just trying to be aggressive when I'm in the game, and guys gave me great opportunities that I'm able to take advantage of. So it was a good team win. Q. Did you guys tweak anything since the last time you played them where you've had more success doing anything, or did having a neutral court atmosphere kind of level the playing field? COACH DAWKINS: Well, this time of year I think it's good to tweak what you do, and we have done that. We've been looking at different things that we think can really complement our personnel. I thought our guys executed very well tonight, especially offensively, some of the things that we installed recently. Q. Did you change any matches specifically since the last time you played them or any schemes? COACH DAWKINS: I give my assistants a lot of credit. We changed up a number of our match‑ups in this game for them. I think the match‑ups were good for us from the standpoint of it was something different, usually you have status quo. When you walk out there you kind of know your match‑ups. We went against the grain and changed our match‑ups up, and I think it was good. Q. Arizona State loves to run. UCLA likes to run even more. This will be your third game in three days. I'm curious, how do you attack a running team like UCLA? Do you worry about the idea of fatigue against that sort of team? COACH DAWKINS: Well, let me take the second part of the question first. I don't worry about fatigue with my team. I think they train hard. If this was a normal summer, fall, these guys would be playing every day anyway, and they'd be going after each other every day. So this is the same type of environment now except you're playing against someone else. So our guys will be focused and ready to compete. Both of those teams run very well. Of Course UCLA is a terrific transition team, as you mentioned, and we have to focus on that. We have to do our best to try to make them a half court team. We have things that we have to talk about tonight. We have to watch them on film and see what they're doing now. Teams change as they evolve and the season goes on. So we need to see what they're doing and try to find out what we can do to slow them down. Q. Josh, at any point in the game did you get a feel that things were going your way at any point in the game? JOSH HUESTIS: I'm going to give you pretty much the same answer that Coach gave you. I might reword it a little bit. I mean, early in the game when I realized we came out really aggressive, really it just seemed to me that we were playing like we're capable of. To me, I don't see it as tonight being our night. It was more us playing to the level we're capable of playing. So from now on it's just a matter of achieving that same amount of aggressiveness and toughness. As far as it being our night, I would say more along the lines of us finally reaching our potential, and hopefully we'll just continue it. Q. Josh, we're ten minutes into this, and no one has asked you guys if you think you're in the NCAA tournament. What are your thoughts about that? JOSH HUESTIS: Obviously at this time of the year that is something that's always in the back of your mind. But right now we started out this season with one main goal and that is to win the Pac‑12. The rest will take care of itself. We try to win this conference, and then if we do that, then we don't put it in anybody's hands. We've got the bid. As long as we take care of business this weekend, we'll be fine. Q. I was going to ask you the same thing. Yesterday you said you don't worry about the tournament and the pressure of it and whatnot. But now winning this game has got to feel a little like okay this might be clinched? COACH DAWKINS: No, we're not approaching it that way at all. I've been in this business a long time. I don't know if you ever can clinch it unless you've won a championship. That is the approach we've taken with our players all season. We said if we take care of what we need to do in the Pac‑12, the rest takes care of itself. That's what we've said all season long. That's been our approach. I think our kids have really stuck to that, and they understand it's one game at a time and let's take care of business. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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