Post-game interview with Damon Stoudamire
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00:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:06 >> Got that ass working.
00:09 >> Questions?
00:10 >> [LAUGH] >> I never heard you say, man.
00:13 >> Go ahead.
00:16 >> On that topic, it seemed like maybe the effort wasn't there early in the game,
00:22 in the first half.
00:23 Just how would you assess that, and
00:25 did the team seem flat to you coming out again?
00:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:31 >> I mean, the thing about it is, you don't have a big margin for error.
00:37 So I could use the excuse of being flat, but
00:41 I'm gonna say we just didn't come ready to play.
00:46 It's a make or miss game, so you're gonna make shots, you're gonna miss shots.
00:52 But that don't mean you don't play hard.
00:54 I just didn't think we played hard, collectively.
00:58 It's not one person.
01:00 And then what happened is, when you start missing shots and then they score,
01:04 I feel like we took some difficult shots.
01:07 It just kinda got away from everything, we weren't getting downhill.
01:11 We weren't creating advantages, we weren't making plays for one another.
01:17 It just makes it harder, because Wake Forest is a really good team when they
01:22 don't have resistance on the offensive end, and we didn't give them any resistance.
01:27 And so they were just running out on our misses,
01:30 and they were attacking us off the bounce.
01:34 And collectively, we just didn't have the juice tonight.
01:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]
01:46 >> Yesterday, you said you felt this team was close.
01:48 I mean, any explanation for now not maybe being so close?
01:52 >> I did, I mean, I'm not gonna backtrack on those words.
01:58 I felt it, but the game didn't show it, period.
02:04 There's a, I always say this,
02:09 coaching kids is tricky from the standpoint of,
02:15 I'm always pulling for them individually.
02:21 But I know more than they know from this standpoint,
02:26 like none of them today will get out of basketball what they want if they don't
02:33 do it together, and so for me, that is the most disappointing thing.
02:39 Today's game for me was just a reminder that as I move forward with the next eight,
02:45 nine games that we have left and then moving forward in this program,
02:51 you gotta keep getting guys lost in the little things.
02:55 Because when you're not making shots, what else do you do on the court?
02:58 And so that's the situation that you had tonight.
03:03 So when you got so many people struggling, it's like, what else do you do?
03:08 Are you getting lost in the game?
03:10 And that's winning 50-50 balls, that's rebounding with two hands.
03:15 I don't know who it was on our team, I can't really remember right now, but
03:19 I always say this, man, if you don't dive for a ball, you're gonna get your ACL torn.
03:22 So in front of their bench, somebody on their team dove for the ball, and
03:25 we was down there reaching for the ball.
03:26 It's just, you gotta get lost in the little things.
03:32 When you're struggling to turn the game and to get things,
03:37 man, which we've done a lot this season.
03:41 You gotta dig a little deeper and do the little things.
03:43 I just didn't feel like we did any of the little things and
03:46 we didn't get lost in the game.
03:48 Again, to be in games like this where it gets out of hand so early,
03:54 as I was telling you in timeouts, there's no 20 point play.
04:00 So you gotta get a stop and a score, stop and a score.
04:03 And you gotta get, continue and build that up and go from there.
04:09 But we just, to me, just compounded a mistake with a mistake.
04:15 And so some of it is youth, and some of it is just not knowing how to win.
04:22 And then some of it is not knowing how to protect yourself.
04:24 I've been in games like this.
04:27 You can look it up.
04:30 I've been in two of the worst losses in history at the NBA.
04:34 History.
04:37 When I was in Portland, we lost to Cleveland by 63, I think it was.
04:42 And we lost to Indiana by 59.
04:46 So I know what these games feel like and I know what they look like.
04:50 But even in defeat, not making shots, we play hard.
04:54 And you gotta play hard because at times you gotta just learn how to save
04:59 yourself by playing hard.
05:01 You just play hard.
05:04 And when you play hard, we probably wasn't gonna win the game, but
05:08 you're playing hard.
05:10 So you individually have something that you can hang your hat on instead of us
05:14 coming back.
05:16 And now, we leave it in the coach's hands to say, did he play hard?
05:23 Is he still all in?
05:26 Is he bought in?
05:27 Or is he wavering?
05:28 Is he, what does that look like?
05:31 So that for me was the disappointing thing,
05:34 cuz the game never got to any type of strategy.
05:38 There was no strategy.
05:41 So you can't, from that standpoint, we're just talking about playing hard.
05:46 And we didn't do that.
05:47 >> Rob.
05:48 >> You often talk about what you do on the offensive end translates to
05:54 the defensive end.
05:56 And of course, not making shots.
05:58 What made it so easy for them to get in the paint and
06:02 score in the paint like they did?
06:03 >> It's human nature.
06:06 When you're not scoring as a team or an individual, it's human nature.
06:13 You just tend to not play that type of defense unless you are on that type of
06:18 team, you know what I mean?
06:21 And so we got a little loose with it, transition.
06:25 I mean, a couple times in transition, the ball was being guarded.
06:28 And we had another guy running the ball.
06:29 You know what I mean?
06:31 So some of it was uncharacteristic, and some of it was just,
06:35 you gotta have feel for the game.
06:36 We've struggled a bit guarding the ball all season.
06:44 But at the same time too, it was more than just getting beat off the bounce.
06:49 It was backdoor cuts.
06:50 It was offensive glass.
06:51 It was different things that they were doing.
06:53 And again, we just didn't bring the juice tonight.
06:57 I mean, I get it, there's stories that need to be written and
07:04 all that stuff, but at the end of the day, it's all summed up the same way.
07:08 We didn't play hard enough to win.
07:09 >> Anything else for coach?
07:12 >> All right, thank you, coach.
07:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]