USF Men's Basketball
USF vs. Providence
Feb. 27, 2010
USF Sun Dome
Postgame Quotes
USF Head Coach Stan Heath
That was a big win for us. We needed it and I knew it wasn't going to be easy. It seems like we played Providence just a game out of the Wild Wild West. It was the OK Corral shootout. Fortunately for us we had a little bit more in the tank those last three or four minutes. I thought we had good balance. Mercer, you had a nice game. I thought Chris Howard was terrific. Dominique obviously is such a presence and commands so much attention and opens things up. It's good to see Gilchrist really give us some good production, the way he did. It was a great team effort that and felt we had to have it. Anything less than a victory would have been a downer for us.
On what making their free throws shows-
I think it shows we've got some toughness. We have worked hard in that area and it's good to see things pay off for us. But again, I thought it was good focus for our basketball team. And we just stayed with it. I think both times we played Providence, they could have easily written us off at different times and this team didn't.
On how Augustus Gilchrist played-
He took what the defense gave him. He was ready to finish around the rim; he had a big three for us in the early part of the second half. I just thought he made some good post moves around the basket and he's a good free throw shooter.
On the importance of having a deep bench-
I felt we needed to use our bench quite a bit, and it was good for us to have it. I knew at some point in time in this particular game our four-guard lineup was going to be very important. But I knew I couldn't play it the whole game because those guys are going to get worn down because they have to give great effort. I know it didn't look like we played much defense, but believe it or not we have to get great effort because they are a hard team to play against; they are a hard team to guard. It seemed like early on we didn't get the stops and later on when we got the stops we gave up the second shots. And I thought finally the last four minutes we did what we were supposed to do. We got the stops and we got the rebounds.
On if he wanted the pace to be up and down during the first half-
Yeah, I think that's been what's missing from our team. Everybody says well what's been missing. We haven't been playing as much in transition. We haven't been, defensive rebounding and maybe getting as many deflections and steals as we need to get. So I was okay with it. I did think that there were times where, and that was our key, hey if its three on three or three on four and we don't have advantage numbers, then we've got to run a little offense. I thought there was a few times in the second half we tried to force it and we made some mistakes. But for the most part we did a good job.
On the key to the team after Providence made the last three-
Chris Howard. He made a heck of a play. Chris Howard and Dominique, it seems like they've been playing forever. And I saw it too, as soon as he hit that three, I saw Chris looking and I said hey, let it go. Normally, you might want to call a timeout and set up the last play, I said no, let that go. Because I knew if Dominique got it and it's one on one, possibly one on two, probably something good was going to happen.
On passing up open three point shots-
Yeah, there's no secret. That's not our biggest strength, shooting the three. We're going to take some, but we want to be selective with the ones we take. I just told the guys, I said hey, that shot that they're giving you early in the clock, it'll be there late in the clock. So let's probe the defense a little bit more and have a little patience. And I thought we were pretty smart with the three. A guy like Crater, who's up and down, he hit two big ones that mattered and gave us some nice momentum.
On if they're going to use beating Providence to go on a four game winning streak like last team they beat Providence-
I sure hope so. I sure hope this is another start of a run. Again, I think we've just learned so many different things about playing in this league and one of the things is you better throw all of the records out of the window. We've got DePaul next. And DePaul is not an easy out. We've got to make sure that we have total focus there. We're playing at their place and I'm sure that they'd like to get us. We've got to stay focused game by game and possession by possession.
On if he saw Sharaud Curry's technical-
Yeah, it was a tough play. Dominique made the score and I know Sharaud was a little down at that. And I don't think he meant anything. He just slammed the ball. It's an automatic. And so it was the right call, it was tough that it happened at that time. But hey, we'll take it.
USF Guard Mike Mercer
On how fun the game was as a player-
Yeah, the transition game is definitely fun, especially when you win. That's their type of ball playing. They're one of the better scoring teams in the Big East so we knew that coming in. We knew we were going to have to defend and we knew we were going to have to rebound. Fortunately we got that done.
On confidence during the game-
When something like that happens, the way we beat Providence at Providence, you know you always have confidence. Even when you're down, by seven or eight points with 30 or 40 seconds left, you always know you can come back and win. And that's something we instilled in ourselves, basically throughout the season. We've faced so many things, so we all just bonded together and got it done.
On the high scoring of people on the team-
We know we're not going to have every game like that. Fortunately today we knew we had to put the ball in the hole in order to win. And we got that done. Chris Howard gave us huge numbers. Gilchrist, he's back to playing his style of basketball and that's definitely going to help us down the stretch.
USF Guard Chris Howard
On the last few seconds of the game -
Sharaud Curry had me isolated, like he was trying to do all night. He had a big shot, big three. The first thing that came to my mind was Marquette. People that watch basketball a lot, when shots are made like that, it just stops the crowd, they are just stunned. But at the same time I was just thinking, hurry up and get that ball. And me and Dominique, I know he is on that island ready to go, because I've seen him in transition and I've seen him on my side. I threw the ball and he does what he does and transitions. He's a guy that's hard to stop. He got a full burst of speed, he got a foul on the play, and the rest is history.
How far did you throw it to him?
I threw it to him about half court, it was a little bit in front of him, so he caught it on the bounce.
How much did that first game give you guys confidence?
The first game played a lot into it. And every time out coach was saying you know you can get back into the game. So that definitely played a lot into it. It just shows the character that this team has. We easily could have given up, threw the towel in and gotten ready for our next game. I take my hat if to my teammates in finding a way to win.
You were down nine late into the second, what was the key to you guys coming back and winning?
Just being aggressive. Not settle for threes, getting to the rim, and just pushing the ball in transition, and putting pressure on them. Eventually we hoped that they would wear down, and I'm not saying they did wear down, but our shots started to come, shots like layups and jumps and things like that. I think that's the thing that really helped us, just getting out there and running.
On the lineup against Providence
We had problems with Peterson. They kept running plays with him on the wing. I think coach went with Dominique on him, but we know when that happens, that it's me, Anthony Crater, Mike Mercer, Dominique Jones on the floor at the same time. So if any time one of us gets the rebound, there is one less pass we have to make, and then we just get out and transition, and try to get in the lanes and create opportunities for each other, and teams are going to have problems with that.
Providence Coach Keno Davis
On Jones -
I think he's as good as advertised, not just one of the best players to play at South Florida, but I think he will have a long, long career at another level.
On the defense during last half of the game-
Our transition defense was not the strongest throughout the entire game. Sometimes in key moments of the game, when teams hit big shots or teams take big shots, everybody kind of stands around to see what's going to happen. The ball went in and I think we kind of froze, as far as getting back in transition, with Sharaud Curry taking that shot, so we had a breakdown there. Give South Florida credit, their transition offense was something they worked on going into the game, and it paid off with a big play right there.
On Curry's technical -
"I didn't see it, I didn't see it at all. I had turned on the foul to make a substitution play and just heard the call. You hate to have a game with a big call like that, but I can't really comment on it because I didn't see it.
On Curry's reaction to the technical -
I didn't ask him at the time. The play was over so I didn't think the officials would change their mind if I found out what exactly he did. I'm sure it was deserving of a technical, whether it was deserving of it at that time, I don't know. People that see it or saw it would have a better feeling for it.
On Curry's mental breakdown after the technical -
I don't think anybody's more disappointed than Sharaud for giving up the bucket, the foul and the technical foul afterwards. But I stress to our team afterwards that a lot of times when games go down to the wire and you look at one missed play at the end of the game or one foul, that's not really the game. There are so many plays that you can look to you can't just dwell on one play, you've got to look at the play in the first half, or the first two minutes of the game, just like you do at the last two. You have to do that, if you want to be disciplined and continue to improve as a player.
On losing such a high scoring game -
"Well it's frustrating and disappointing to not win no matter what you do. If you score 50 points and win you'd be pretty happy about it. The one on one defense has not been our strength of our team this year and we need to get better quickly at it for this year. We'll see how much we can improve in the last couple of games. Then guys have to know in the off season that if they can't defend and if they can't rebound, on the offensive side, some guys need to shoot a better percentage. If they can't improve that, other guys are going to pass them by. It could be guys that are on the team that are looking for offseason improvement or it could be other guys coming in with new recruits, but that's where you really develop as a team. The guys take these losses hard. You don't just take them hard after the game you take them hard into the offseason. You say "okay next year we're going to be better at this and that" and you're going to do so because of hard work. It's those guys that in the history of Providence College have turned themselves in to great players. It hasn't always been the McDonald's All-American, it's the guy under the radar that just out works everybody and that's a fan's favorite and a coach's favorite. I hope we have a couple of them on our roster right now.
On facing Jones and getting to the line-
I thought we played about as hard as we could on him. I don't know that we were technically as sound as we would like, but I'm not making any excuse for this game. We had planned our practice and preparation to have a really good practice yesterday. After spending all the hours in Boston airport, we didn't really have a walk through in Boston airport, and so when we got in at 10:30 p.m. it was a little late to be able to have another practice. I think we needed that in order to really help our help defense, to not give them the free throw line. We had been shooting well before the Syracuse game, we had been shooting 30 free throws a game. We've really been attacking the line and then South Florida got those calls tonight. They got there 38 times to our 22, and then of course only making 11 is something we're going to have to address and work on individually.
