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Kent State vs. Buffalo (MAC Semis)
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cschierh Offline
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Post: #16
RE: Kent State vs. Buffalo (MAC Semis)
Here’s the Buffalo press conference. It’s really good, especially how they built their defense to stop de la Rosa.


KEN MATHER: We're going to welcome our Buffalo Bulls to the press conference room. We'll go ahead and let our head Coach Nate Oats open with an opening statement, and then we'll take questions for Jeremy Harris and Jayvon Graves.

COACH OATS: It was a hardfought game. We knew it was going to be that way of a game. Every game we play with Kent State ends up being a brawl. I told our guys, too, before the game, listen, they would rather go out with a fistfight than they would go home with a loss. Just at the end of the game we need to make sure we've got all of our players available for Saturday. Keep your head. It kind of came to that.

I thought the referees did a great job keeping it under control late in the game. I thought throughout the course of the game we did a really good job on defense. They had 19 Oboards, which is a little disappointing, but I thought our guys just hung in there, just got another stop. I didn't think they had too many uncontested shots most of the game after we got the fouling kind of out of the way there early in the game, and got accustomed to how they were going to call it.

I thought we did a pretty good job on the defensive end. It's nice to have some offensive talent. Nice to have Jeremy Harris on our team this weekend. He had five of six from 3s, not bad. And the one he missed, he told me he probably shouldn't have shot it, it was kind of contested. I think he was five for five up to that point.

Offensively, if we don't turn the ball over, we don't usually have a problem putting the ball in the basket. We didn't hit 80 but Kent State makes it tough, they do a good job. We made enough we scored enough to get the win but backtoback games with eight turnovers, if we don't turn the ball over, we're usually pretty good. Then just take care of it on the defensive end.

I was happy for Jayvon, he comes home here, he played at Akron St. V's last year and won a state championship here in Ohio. He had a great game for us, hit some big shots for us when we needed him. I thought he gave us quality minutes there. He almost got 20 minutes as a freshman, so that was big.

Q. Jeremy, for you, do you have a third game like this in you for tomorrow night?

JEREMY HARRIS: I'm not really sure, but I mean, I'm just focused on the defensive side of the ball so we'll see.

Q. What's it been like, if I can continue real quick, what kind of zone have you been in these last two days where you spot and hit and it's like you can't miss?

JEREMY HARRIS: I have to give the credit to my teammates, they the ones that's finding me. It's not like I'm taking the shots as much, but my teammates do a good job of finding me in transition, and I do, I make the shot a little bit.

Q. For both players, you guys really shut them down inside and they kind of feed off of that, if they can't get it going inside, they kind of struggle. I think De La Rosa only had one shot in the first half. Talk about your defensive game plan on kind of just bottling that up.

JEREMY HARRIS: I have to say they gave us our first loss, and he was a big reason to it. But our game plan going into him was fight him real hard, front him in the post and make him make tough shots. I think we did that, credit to our bigs.

JAYVON GRAVES: We had help on the back side for him, so we knew it would be tough for him to get the ball.

Q. Jeremy, what do you think about this game like as just sort of mentality challenge? They're a very gutsy I don't know if that's the word you would use but they're a tough team, they fight, did you feel like just talk about that, like matching their intensity because you knew they were going to come at you?

JEREMY HARRIS: Coach O told us before the game that they was going to go out with a fistfight before they went out. We just stayed locked in as a team and played the game of basketball.

Q. You came out flying, actually it seemed like you got a couple open 3 looks there. What do you remember about starting so fast?

JEREMY HARRIS: I have to say I think Wes found me both times, like I say, he do a good job of giving me open shots. He gets in the paint, we work on the paint touches, so I've got to give credit to him.

Q. For Jayvon, between the energy of the crowd and being in your hometown, how did that kind of help your performance. You had three blocks in the first half, really came out there strong defensively?

JAYVON GRAVES: The crowd helped me because we have a good fan base. Playing in front of home is just always good. Our coaches made sure we played good defense, and that's what I was focusing on.

Q. Did you ever have a block into the stands?

JAYVON GRAVES: Have I ever?

Q. Blocked a ball into the stands?

JAYVON GRAVES: No.

Q. You know, were you feeling like the mojo here because of your state championship?

JAYVON GRAVES: It gave me a good boost.

Q. For either of you guys, both of you guys, to now have a chance to win a third MAC title for this team in four years, trip to the NCAA Tournament's on the line, I guess how excited are you guys and what does this mean to you?

JEREMY HARRIS: I have to say it means a lot to us but this would be our first one. We've got to come in tomorrow focused and forget about the past two days and lock in on the winner of this game.

JAYVON GRAVES: I'm very excited. Being a freshman, this is why I came to Buffalo, so I'm excited for it.

Q. The first loss to Kent, they had that big second half rally. It seemed like that was maybe trending a little bit in the direction in the first portion of this second half tonight. What was the mentality and the message delivered at that point to then shoot off in the other direction?

JEREMY HARRIS: I mean, it's basketball. I mean, they made a little run, I think we got a deflection out of bounds so luckily it was a media timeout, we came together as a team and went back out there and pushed the lead up a little bit more.

Q. Coach, I'll start with you. Again on that defense, particularly in the first half. Like I said, you bottled up their whole inside pretty good, and I think De La Rosa only had one shot. Was that the game plan, to just really kind of make sure that they didn't get anything going in there?

COACH OATS: Yeah, it was, because we went to their place and took the loss. If you went back and watched the second half at their place, De La Rosa really hurt us a lot. I thought our bigs were a little bit lazy, let the ball get in there the entire second half. If we doubled, he passed out of it well. If he didn't, he scored it. So we didn't want him to catch the ball. It was don't give me post catches. We had to put a ton of ball pressure on him, means we had to play a little harder. It is what it is.

I thought our guards did a good job pressuring the ball, and we had great backside help on it. They didn't really have any options other than skipping it across the floor. And on the skips, I thought our guys did a pretty good job covering back up. They ended up 7 of 25 from 3. If we hadn't given those transition 3s there in the middle of the second half to Jalen Avery, it might have been 3 there in the second half. I thought our guys did a really good job. And Jaylin Walker was 2 for 9. The one he hit there to close the first half, there's not a whole lot more you're going to do about that. It's just a tough shot. Outside of that one, he only hit one of his other eight attempts.

So I thought covering the 3point line well, coming back out of that back side help, you know when you front the post, and you've got to, if they skip it our ball pressure made them a little bit more air time on the ball. So I thought everybody it wasn't just our bigs, it was guards with the ball pressure, guards getting the help and guards being able to close back out to the shooters off it.

So our guys have been really locked in, though, here on the offensive end. Depending on who wins this game, we'll get the scouting report in. Coach Whitesell does an unbelievable job getting them ready with the walkthroughs. We did three walkthroughs. One last night and two today before the game. So they're fully aware of everything they're running. Our guys have done a great job getting locked in that way.

Q. I know you've got guys like CJ and Nick, who have been in this position before, they were there two years ago when you won it, but you've also got a lot of guys who haven't been here before. What's your message to the guys going into this game tomorrow?

COACH OATS: I mean, we talked about that coming into this. I talked about it before the Bowling Green game, the last regular season game. I told them if you think about winning three games down in Cleveland, that's way too much to think about. Like we can't do that, then you get ahead of yourself. What we need to do is just win one at a time. I said, let's start with this Bowling Green game, let's make this our first tournament game since there's eight other teams that have to play Monday before we get to play Thursday. They'll have a tournament game under their belt already. Let's make Friday our first tournament game, and let's just take it one possession at a time in that game and don't worry about the next three games and then let's do the same thing again Thursday. And let's not worry about winning three, let's just win one. And in that one game, let's just win one possession at a time. I think you just take them one at a time, I don't think you think about it.

Now obviously in the back of their minds, there's a lot more media here than there is at a normal regular season game, so there's a little bit more pressure and there's a little bit more on the line. It's come down to one game. This is what we've talked about doing since we got beat by Kent State last year here. It's going to be a tough game. Toledo's been right behind us all year in the regular season standings, either 01 or either tied or one or two games behind us the whole time since we beat them the first game of the regular season. But Eastern's beat them twice, so we don't know who. Our guys said, can we watch it. I said maybe 10 minutes, we've got to get them off. It helps to be the one seed, get more rest, so we're going to get them out of here pretty quick and get them rested for the game tomorrow.

Q. Have you had a team like the guard depth defensively, you've got five guards who all it's not like you have to hide any of them. And then the second thing is, what has Graves been doing to earn these key minutes?

COACH OATS: I mean, no, I've never had a team with this much depth. Maybe back in high school, not since we've been here to Division 1 level. You've got an alldefensive kid in Jordan this year, Defensive Player of the Year in Caruthers last year, Wes Clark's more than capable of handling the whole zone on defense. Jayvon is super athletic. What Jayvon has done is he realizes if you don't guard, you're not going to play, so he's guarding. He's more than physically capable of doing it, he's an unbelievable athlete with a great body. He can really guard 1 through 4 a lot of times. When we switch a lot of ball screens, him and CJ, the other one, the fifth one, they give us that big guard that can guard a 4, and still guard a point guard. So you're able to switch like we did yesterday with Central Michigan. We put CJ on Luke Meyer, switched every ball screen. You can do the same thing with Jayvon, so it gives you a lot of versatility, what you can do on the defensive end when you've got a bunch of guards like that.

Q. It was probably the best day in UB sports history when the men and women won two years ago here. How cool would that be to see that happen again?

COACH OATS: It would be great. When we came back to Buffalo, the whole town was really into the deal. Felisha's done an unbelievable job. I think they're in no matter what, from what I'm hearing. I think they have a little bit less pressure than we do. I think the women's side of it in. The MAC is, I think, 7th ranked in the RPI. They're probably in. It would be great if we could win it. We keep talking. She hit me up the other night, one down, five to go. They got theirs down, we had to get three. So now I guess we're four down, two to go. Probably look at my phone, I'm sure she texted me.

Yeah, I mean, it would be great. I remember last time, we sat there, we have to game prep and do our stuff so we weren't at the game, we were doing pregame meal. We had it up on I think it was E3 on the iPad, we were watching it. Stephanie Reid hit the game winner and the whole, you know, where we were eating pregame meal, everybody kind of erupted. It was a great time.

We've got a lot of fans, a lot of people making the trip down I90 through a snowstorm. Hopefully, we get a lot more tomorrow for both games. It would be great if we could both pull the thing off again.

Q. Last year's game with Kent State kind of turned into a free throw competition in the second half. How much different did this game go? You didn't score a ton, but you were able to get the pace going a little more.

COACH OATS: We just felt like there was no way De La Rosa could play. I mean, he's been playing 35plus minutes, we didn't think he could run with us for 35. You could see him. I mean, he untied his shoe so that he could tie it one time to get a little extra break out there, but he was dragging. We just that's how we play best and it's easier to run off stops, so when we're running off our stops, that's kind of when we got the lead broke open.

And then we got really tired. I probably left a couple guys in, CJ and Nick, a tad too long. They went on that little run, we got fresh bodies in, gave us three or four great minutes there, give Perk a break and then got those guys back in and finished the game up.

Appreciate it, thanks.
03-09-2018 11:58 PM
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RE: Kent State vs. Buffalo (MAC Semis) - cschierh - 03-09-2018 11:58 PM



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