Ernie Kent after Oregon
My video camera gave out early in Ernie Kent's postgame interview, but here's what the WSU coach had to say after game.
Opening Statement:
I thought Oregon was just terrific in the game and one of the things we talked about is they were going to get a bigger crowd and this crowd was going to electrify that building for them. And they're a great team that has gotten rolling in this building. I've done TV games here and seeing them get on that kind of a roll and sure enough, I thought they played up in the building, they were fantastic in the game , they shot the ball extremely well.
Everybody shot it, it seemed like. We tried man, we tried zone, we tried double-teaming Young and he got into that groove, too. And obviously we didn't play it very well. We didn't shoot it very well. When we don't shoot it we're not a very good basketball team, especially playing against a team of this caliber in their building the way they played.
Question: What should the team do to manufacture offense when the shots aren't falling?
Ernie Kent: We are who we are and we know that. We know we need to shoot it and everything else. We have our limitations in some areas. We need to shoot the ball and to do that you've got to play with a lot of confidence, a lot of courage. We didn't play with it tonight.
Q: Do you worry about the team's confidence after a loss like that?
EK: I never worry about that because I've said this all before, you never get too up, you never get too down, you just get ready for the next one. The games come too fast, there is still a lot of basketball for this team to play and it really is about where their growth is going to be finishing up the season and everything so they have more growth in them. I don't worry about being too hard on anybody. It's about moving forward, getting better, bringing them back to the drawing board again and getting back out there and ready to play again.
Q: What was it like coaching in Eugene again?
EK: Again, when the game gets going it really isn't about the building because you're so locked into what's going on, on the floor. Coming in here and practicing the other day and being able to have these guys look around – I've been in this building before, to have those kids go up stairs and walk, I think it probably surprised them, the success that we've had here.
Again, the greatest thing about this building is through the help of many people see the generosity of Phil and Penny Knight, a building that your program was here when it was resurrected and put up, I should say, it's gonna be here for the next 100 years. All of us are going to be out of jobs, out of work, out of here, I know I'm not going to be around. But when you see that, that tells you that you had a special time here.
Q: Is there a reason the team is struggling against these stretch, face-up power forwards?
EK: Well Jarmal Reid is not a stretch-four, he's a guy that keeps you at 15 feet and he can drive, he can score. He's not a prototype European guy, Benjamin's just a great shooter that shot it well so Josh has his limitations and we know that as well, too, so there's not a lot we can do as they get on their game like that and start to shoot it because it wasn't just Benjamin in this game that we had to worry about.
Q: How did the game change with Bell out?
EK: I think by going small it put more offensive firepower on the floor for them. When Bell's on the floor, when we played them the first time we were able to take him away from the bucket. He was a non-factor in blocking shots and he wasn't a great scorer. By going small they put more scorers on the floor, they had more energy, more energy in the building, they got off to a great start. It became a track meet. I felt like they were running a 100-yard dash and I thought we were running a mile and then those two just don't match up together.
Q: Was this game emotional at all?
EK:
The way the game started takes all that out of the way because now you're in a mode of trying to push buttons and get your team back into the game, get their energy up and everything else.
Again, it isn't the first time I've been back and there's a lot of stuff that was written about how I'd never coach in this building but I knew I was going to be coaching in it and coaching at the other end, so it was nice to come back here and I think the thing that's special to me is to see all the support staff that works behind the scenes. They greet you out in the tunnel then man stuff back here because I look at those people and realize, some of them have been 20-30 years in Mac Court.
That old, beat-up old building over there amongst all those pipes and when it rained the water used to come into our office and into our locker room over there. Now they have this building they can work in. That gives me a lot of pride to see those people because those people are, in my opinion, a big part of what I call the "heart and foundation" of what Oregon is all about because they've been through so much and they've stuck in there and they've hung in there and they continue to work relentlessly.
Q: Was the way Dexter Kernich-Drew continued to attack the basket encouraging at all?
EK: For me to say that I've got to go back and look at tape and find out what was encouraging. There wasn't a lot to be encouraged about in this game because I didn't think we had the grit and fight and toughness to come back at them. They gave us a knockout punch in the first five or six minutes of the game that we really never responded to and we were kind of in catch-up mode the rest of the way.
