University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Post-Game Quotesheet
3/14/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 14, 2014
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POST GAME QUOTESHEET
Pitt vs. No. 15 North Carolina, ACC Tournament Quarterfinal, March 14, 2014
Pitt 80, No. 15 North Carolina 75
AN INTERVIEW WITH PITT COACH Jamie Dixon, Lamar Patterson AND James Robinson
COACH DIXON:
Thank you for being here. I was really proud of our guys. We came back and played hard obviously and played well and executed all the way through. I was really excited about how we played. Beat a very good team. I felt after playing them down there, we got in foul trouble. Talib wasn't healthy, Lamar wasn't healthy, I told our guys we went in expecting to win this game. That was our thought process going into it and I thought our guys did a great job. Obviously Talib 21 rebounds, 19 points. The glass, the rebounding was key. We set that. We won that rebounding by 15. We only got it to 8. I thought we did a great job battling. Fought through some foul trouble obviously and some missed free throws down the stretch. But we'll make them tomorrow, I'm very sure of that and confident about that, as we've been shooting them very well in recent games. We're playing our basketball now as we've shown, and as I said yesterday, and we'll continue to do so tomorrow.
Q. James, early in the game, you were more aggressive offensively than you had normally been the last few weeks. You just wanted to set the tone and get your team off running?
James Robinson: Not really. I think I just had open shots and I took them. My teammates did a really good job finding me when I was open. Obviously a lot of the defense was really keying on Lamar and Cam and they did a really good job finding the open players tonight.
Q. Lamar, it looked like you were grabbing your wrist at one point. Is it still bothering you at all?
Lamar Patterson: No. It's fine. It's all right.
Q. For James and Lamar, how did the foul situation down the stretch affect how you guys (no audio feed) --
Q. Guys, can you talk about how the close games you were in this season prepared you, if at all, what you faced down the stretch and how much that benefitted you late in the season this year?
Lamar Patterson: It benefitted us. Like I said today, usually we make our free throws, but today we wasn't that good at it. It's good. We know what we have to do. We know we can't give up. The games previously during the season that were close and that we lost and the ones that we took stuff from each of them and we were able to close it out today.
Q. UVA has been able to win even when Joe Harris has been off, but how much more dangerous are they when he's hitting shots? And then for the players, can you comment from what you remember from the UVA game?
COACH DIXON: They want to keep the scores down. They want to keep it low. I think they have very good balance. I think Joe Harris obviously was the name coming in. He's the senior. He's the scorer. I think Brogdon didn't play last year and they're all returning guys. With that, I think you normally see teams get more scoring out of other guys. I think their balance is really their strength. I think because Joe was picked as a preseason all-league player, you know, the focus is on him, but obviously some other guys have progressed and they've got balanced scoring all the way through. So there's not just one guy.
Q. Lamar, thoughts on Virginia?
Lamar Patterson: We lost at the buzzer. So that game could have went either way. We'll be ready for it. So we know where -- we can play with them or we can play with anybody in the country we feel like. So we'll be ready to go. We'll have our minds and body ready.
James Robinson: We know what we have to do coming in. Obviously rebound and defend, which have kind of been our things that we try to do every night since the beginning of the season. So we're going to get back and get ready for the game tomorrow.
Q. What other than effort obviously with --
COACH DIXON: Shots is key to that. For him, we went smaller. It allows us to penetrate. It made them rotate. Obviously he has a knack for it. He's always been good at it. He was on the glass constantly. He uses quickness. I think they had some bigger guys guarding him and that was to his benefit, his strength, using his quickness and his agility.
Q. As a coach, when you look at a special player like Marcus Paige, he has 27 points, but at the same time it looked like you built your lead with Cam Wright kind of slowing him down in the first half. Do you see the pluses or do you see the 27?
COACH DIXON: No. Obviously the game changed, it got prolonged, it was a different game at the end. I thought we did a good job to put ourselves in the position. You want to be in the position that you're at. Obviously the teams are going to make runs. If you don't make free throws, that run is going to be fueled by that. He kept battling and he kept playing. You know, they got some long rebounds, they got some loose balls at the end. It was a different game down the stretch. Seemed to change at a certain point in the game. It's just -- but we got it right and we did what we needed to do.
Q. For Jamie, the turnaround from this game playing at a fast pace, Virginia will want to keep you in the 50s. Is that more or less of a challenge with the fatigue factor involved?
COACH DIXON: I don't think there's going to be any fatigue factor. We're ready to go. They played today as well. We'll be ready to go. We're excited about it. We're ready to go. We're playing our best basketball right now. I think that's the most important thing.
Q. Jamie, a couple of reports have come out that the ACC tournament looks like it's moving to the Barclays Center in 2017 and 2018 for the league where it is now. What does it do to the New York brand? How much do you think that would help the league?
COACH DIXON: It's going to be great no matter what. That's what we have to remind ourselves of. We can debate it and talk about it and maneuver and try it where you need to have it. But either way it's going to be great, it's going to be terrific. And I think it's going to grow into the best event in college basketball. That's what it will become. We're excited to be part of it. I think it's great for our conference wherever it ends up. We'll be there and we'll be excited about playing.
Q. Do you think that that expansion helps it playing in different places and different people getting a chance to go see it, helps it become this greatest event?
COACH DIXON: I think -- I don't know. I think that's up in the air. I think people like going to the same place. When it was in New York, I think the same. But we've had the same amount of interest going to Greensboro too from our fans. I can't believe that many people were there, even in those corner seats that we got as the first year team, I guess what I was informed of. Notre Dame was in the other corner and Syracuse was in the other corner. That's fair. I think our fans will get there no matter what and they're excited about it. I don't know that -- there's benefits to both. There's benefits to both. Moving it around obviously doesn't give the home court advantage to certain teams every year, but at the same time I think willing to go the same place every time brings a tradition that we have in the Big East. I don't think it's going to be in one place forever. I think it's going to be moved around.
Q. When everyone's looking at resumes for the tournament this time of year, how important is it to kind of have an on-paper win like this one this time of year?
COACH DIXON: Every win is important. You want to be playing your best basketball. We've clearly done. I think that's the most important thing. We weren't healthy. We're now healthy. You factor that in. You look at teams that are playing their best. I've been saying it and we're doing it. And I think this game is another example of that. I think it's the right time to be playing your best.
Q. James, every team practices late game situations. When you see you're up late, you know you're going to take the pounding with the full court press. What do you learn from those late game situations in practice and do you take the same kind of beating there that you take when you're out there on a day like this?
James Robinson: Yeah, definitely in practice. We call it our press team who, you know, they challenge us every day in practice. So it's kind of like a drill. Come game time and, you know, obviously the fans are into it, everybody's up, excited. But I guess as a guard, as a person that's on the court, you got to remain calm and know that everything is going to be all right
AN INTERVIEW WITH NORTH CAROLINA COACH ROY WILLIAMS, MARCUS PAIGE AND JAMES MICHAEL MCADOO
COACH WILLIAMS: Needless to say, it's extremely disappointing to play the way we did the first 30, 32 minutes of the game. You have to congratulate Pittsburgh because they made us play that way. They were really effective. They had a great sense of urgency. They got to the back boards. They got to the loose balls. We were in too much of a rush on the offensive end of the floor. We had some good shots the first three or four possessions and then they didn't go in and we started really rushing thing s and that's how it got to be the margin. And I thought we did a nice job and got back into the ball game right before the half and then we came out in the second half and didn't play very well in the second half early either. But again, you have to congratulate those guys. Talib Zanna 19 points, 21 rebounds at our place. He had a difficult day and he was much more fired up at the end of the game and played well, very well. I think James Robinson, Lamar, all of those guys really did some good things. Jamie's club I thought was sensational yesterday and I thought they played extremely well for the first 30 minutes of the game or 32 minutes of the game, whatever it was. We're really disappointed to say the least. We wanted to be here awhile. The last two years we lost in the championship game. We had some chances. We really tried hard. Got it to four with the ball two different occasions and got it three and didn't get a stop, but it was -- the kids tried exceptionally hard and they're a wonderful bunch of kids. But we just didn't play nearly as well as we wanted to play early.
Q. For anyone. You always want to have momentum going into a tournament. How do you kind of channel that going forward?
MARCUS PAIGE: I think we can learn from the things we did well in that last eight-minute stretch like you said. We played really well. We forced a lot of turnovers and we were able to make things happen with our traps, which will be helpful next week. At the same time we also have to learn that getting down 17 early against good teams, we're only going to play good teams from here on out. That can't happen and it's going to be too big of a hole to dig out of.
Q. Roy, throughout the game it looked like you were sort of looking for combinations, something that would work against this team, and then like you said, seven minutes left, something like that, you went to the full court press. What sparked that or what did you see that made you want to go to that at that time?
COACH WILLIAMS: What we were doing wasn't working very well. We wanted to try something else. At that point I'm dumb enough to still think we had a chance to win the game. If we got some turnovers and got some momentum and got things going in our direction, maybe they missed some free throws, miss some shots, turn it over a little bit. We did a good job in the full court. Once we got in the half court we didn't do as good a job there then. Once they broke our trap we didn't do as well as we needed to do. I don't think many coaches are just going to sit there and let it play out. I'm always the guy that thinks we're going to come back from anything. I've never been behind enough in the game that I didn't think we were going to win. It's just that old saying the clock ran out first. I really did, I thought we were going to come back and win the game. Especially when we got it down to single digits, I thought we it was going to be one of the great finishes. I really believed that. Some people think I'm a little wacko anyway. But you got to try something different, is probably the best answer.
Q. James Michael, why was Zanna such a load inside?
JAMES MICHAEL McADOO: Just his activity level, I would say for 40 minutes. Getting to the boards and having effort. I think part of that is on us, just not doing a good job checking off each and every time they got a shot up. I think he did a good job of going to the front of the rim. A lot of the balls just dropped right in front of his hands.
Q. Marcus, was the tape job on your left hand precautionary or had you hurt it recently?
MARCUS PAIGE: It was really preventative. I fell on it a couple of times in the Duke game and it's been something that's bothered me a little bit. But I mean, it was fine today. I had a little soreness in my thumb, but I practiced with that all week and it was no problem. So it was definitely precautionary.
Q. Coach or for Marcus, from the 12 game winning streak until now, has there been any dip in performance? Obviously playing at Duke and playing at Pittsburgh is pretty good competition.
MARCUS PAIGE: Yeah, I think we were starting to play our best basketball kind of maybe seven or eight games into the streak and then we had a little bit of slippage in our overall intensity and making every play matter and that showed up in the last couple of games more so than the games we were able to edge out and win. But I don't think we played great against Virginia Tech. We didn't play great against Notre Dame and obviously the past two games we didn't play great. We're still doing things well. I think our confidence isn't all a loss. We just got to get back to work and fine tune some things and understand that you got to come ready to play against anyone for 40 minutes, not for ten
COACH WILLIAMS: He said it very well.
Q. To the players, for the better part of the last month, teams have kind of had to match your intensity and your your urgency. Today it was kind of the other way around. Did that knock you back a little bit?
JAMES MICHAEL McADOO: I don't think it necessarily knocked us back. I think it just kind of put us in a hole early like Coach was saying. That's really hard to come back from. Not necessarily when we play with effort, but when we play our game. It does include effort and, just like Coach was saying, doing our job. You know, each and every possession. And I think today, you know, collectively they did better than we were able to.
MARCUS PAIGE: I think in the wins we had, we really set the tone defensively. We were really active. We were all over the place in the defense ends. That hasn't happened recently. I think that's one of the biggest changes. The Maryland game where we came off, we came out defensively just great and that really set the tone for the entire game. We need to start doing that again if we want to be successful.
Q. Marcus, I kind of wanted to follow up on what you just said earlier about confidence. This has been such a weird roller coaster, roster changes obviously. Do you feel like you've exceeded expectations, fallen short of expectations? What were your expectations for this year?
MARCUS PAIGE: The season is not over for us. It's hard to say. There's a lot that could happen in the next however many weeks that could change that answer. I think we have dreams and goals of making the deep tournament run and I think we're capable of doing that. A lot of it rests on that. We're pleased with the way we've been able to fight back and win 12 games in a row and put ourselves in the good position. That's not what our expectation was coming into the year. That's what really made this month.
COACH WILLIAMS: You know, that answer was pretty doggone smart. I get tired of picking on student-athletes. The answer that young man gave you right now, he's probably smarter than half you guys anyway. So sometimes say something good.
Q. Roy, your press has been very effective the last couple of games. Is this something you might want to use more during post-season?
COACH WILLIAMS: We could. It's very taxing on the kids. I mean, it really is. I took Brice and JP out one time because I thought they were about to stop breathing out there. Because it is very taxing. But if the other team gets caught up in it and turns it over, you should get more energy from that. Marcus said there have been times where we've been very good defensively in the half court. It's easier to cover the half court than the full court. We did get some turnovers but they scored every time that we didn't get the turnover. So we've got to do a good job in the full court press, but stop them once we get back in the half court set. We could use it some more. Like Marcus said, we've got -- this is the answer I gave somebody after three or four games when they were saying that North Carolina, North Carolina State and Duke, was I worried, I said, "Don't bury us yet." I'd say the same thing right now. "Don't bury us yet." We've still got some play left.
Q. Coach, Kennedy was limited to eight minutes. Is that just a matter of him still trying to get his feet back underneath him from that virus?
COACH WILLIAMS: No. The coach has got to put in the guys that he thinks is going to do the job at that specific time. I didn't think we were going to get as much out of Kennedy as we could have gotten. I had Joel and Desmond in there. Brice did some really good things. He's got to get better defensively. Same thing with Kennedy. Kennedy has had some unbelievably good games for us. At the same time he's had some games where he hasn't played as well. I've got to get some other guys in there that will play better when he isn't playing as well.
Q. For the record, Marcus is smarter than 99 percent of us in here.
COACH WILLIAMS: I would have said 100, but there may be somebody out there I don't know.
Q. You mentioned the feeling of losing on Sunday the last couple of years. You've also won on Sunday in this event. You've been at this event many times even as an assistant coach. Do you feel a difference in terms of rest, preparation? I mean, I know it's hard to find a silver lining when you lose, but do you notice a difference when you're preparing for the NCAA Tournament when you get to go back to Chapel Hill today rather than Sunday night?
COACH WILLIAMS: You know, David, I think you do feel that difference. But I want to win. You know, who knows what the crap's going to happen next week. For me, if I have a chance to win, I want to win. And my teams have taken me to seven Final Fours. And only one time did we win the conference tournament. But every one of those other times we've tried like crazy to win the sucker. Three or four here and three or four at Kansas. I can't remember how many we've won. But I like to win. And I think that gives you even more confidence kind of thing. It is a little bit of now we got to start another tournament. There's no question you have that feeling. But I like winning.
Q. Roy, I think all of us were wondering which half we were in after you said that. Right at the end you put Wade Moody in, 25 seconds left, senior. I don't know what your rotation would be at that point, but why did you play him, what were you looking at, was that rewarding him for practice?
COACH WILLIAMS: I put him in because the guy beside me just fouled out is the first reason. And Leslie had already fouled out. And Wade is the best shooter of all of the little guys left over there. I do things on senior day to reward those guys. Start the seniors. I don't think I've ever had a team that I didn't start all of the seniors and two times tried to start six of them. The referee never would let me. But I do that to reward. What I was doing with Wade is I thought that gave us the best chance to win. At that time it was a three-point game. And I think I'm right. If we penetrate and all of a sudden throw it to Wade, he's so wacko, he probably would have made the thing. So that's the reason I put him. I really thought it gave us the best chance to win.
Q. The ACC and the Barclays Center are close to reaching the agreement to move the tournament there in 2017. With the tournament in D.C. in 2016, what's your thoughts on it being out of Greensboro for three years?
COACH WILLIAMS: Frankly, my dear. I know that's an improper answer but, I mean, we just got our butts kicked. And we got to get ready for the NCAA Tournament. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a blankety-blank where the hell they put it. If they put it in Siberia, I'm going to try to go play. If they put it in Owen High School in Black Mountain, Swannanoa Valley, I'm going to try our best to go out and play. I know that's not the answer you wanted but you got to remember I'm an old guy up here and we just our butts kicked.