Video: Ernie Kent after Colorado

ERNIE KENT

I thought it was an outstanding college basketball game, I really did. What Utah and Colorado did to us the first time around, I think it shows a tremendous growth in this program because we’ve played everybody tough. We’ve won or we’ve been right there to close out a game, we haven’t always closed them out but we’ve been there with the exception of Arizona and we only played them one time.

I feel like this team has figured out how to play and defense is our destiny, although Booker lit us up tonight and got away from us. But the three seniors were tremendous this year and to be able to lead us like they did and have they games they did.

Jordan grew up this year and everything he’s been through as a student-athlete, for him to perform and he’s been outstanding down the stretch. Dexter just coming of age, been a perfect gentleman on and off the floor. And DaVonte Lacy is somebody who stayed and helped turn the school around, which was huge. They did a tremendous job of showing the younger guys what it takes to be successful. The leadership of this team is going to be excellent because they have excellent leaders going out the door.

Ike Iroegbu, his numbers tonight, just incredible to not let those seniors lose. Josh Hawkinson, 21 and 10, just incredible. Junior Longrus, those are your leaders next year. All of those guys performed and they responded to the challenge of seniors lead us, underclassmen don’t let them lose and let the torch be passed for us to close out a game here. Que was good, Que Johnson, so they all did what they needed to do and to have six guys in double-figures and 50 percent from the field, 50 from the 3-point line and 85 percent at the free-throw line, I think it’s a great indication of what our system can do when everybody is on their A-game. It’s beautiful to watch and I was proud of how they hung in there and pulled it out in overtime.

(Was it meaningful to watch the seniors take over in overtime?)

I don’t know if (the underclassmen) carried them through but they did the job of fighting to not let them lose. Because DaVonté hit the bucket to send it to overtime – he hit some big buckets in the game – but I thought for Dex to hit the 3, DaVonté to hit the 3 and Jordan score to open it up, that was huge. That was senior leadership and you’re right, it got us over the hurdle so that’s what I meant by both groups did their part. The underclassmen did their part, the seniors did their part, particularly in the overtime.

(How did Colorado make it more difficult for Iroegbu to get Hawkinson easy buckets in the second half?)

They started switching the ball screen. The first half we felt like we could attack Josh (Scott) because he’s coming off some injuries and things and I thought our quickness really bothered him and running that high-post ball screen with some shooters on the floor.

They made some adjustments where they switched it, kind of took it away from us and we had to go some other places to get some plays done. But I thought Ike, his decision-making, his energy was terrific in the game and for those two guys to work together, we ran that action for as long as we could run it and they were excellent at making right reads at the right time and a lot of that had to do with Ike.

(Was there more Hawkinson could have done to take advantage of having a guard defending him?)

No, Josh does a great job of playing in space. Where we actually countered it was using two bigs to screen the wings, you saw a lot of action coming out of the corners with shooters coming out.

One shooter comes up, another shooter comes up, and on occasion a third shooter coming out of that corner, too, so that’s how we countered because we put Josh in another situation they had to guard, and their bigs had to guard those shooters off screens and everything and I thought we did a good job of executing that.

(Did you tell your players not to foul immediately when they were able to force a jump-ball?)

We told them to go for the steal, is the first thing you need to do and if you can’t get the steal—they’re thinking a hit’s going to come—to tie the ball up and we had the next possession. And sure enough, instead of putting the ball on the floor where you have to foul, they bend over thinking the hit’s going to come, we get our hands on it, tie it up and get another look at it.

(How nice is it to win a close game?)

You know we were close at Cal on the road, we beat them; Washington on the road, we beat them, Oregon at home, 108 points, we beat them; Arizona State was a close one, we beat them. They came at different times, we felt like we felt the two Oregon state games get away. And then certainly we felt like we let UCLA get away on the road, we played really, really well and let it get away. The beauty of it is, for us to have this conversation they’ve done a lot of growing up and a lot of things right to put themselves in position to close the game. And now they’re still figuring that out. Remember now, this is all new to this team: the wins, this level of play, enough guys on their A-game, the shooting, the confidence, the close games. So they’re just continuing to learn and grow so we felt like all eyar long there were some teams in the conference that had given us their best look. Utah, Colorado, Arizona, UCLA, but we felt like we had enormous growth potential and that’s why we stayed with them and stayed positive and kept bringing them back, bringing them back, because they’re still growing up and what you saw tonight was everybody was kind of on their A-game. Everybody brought their offense and we’re very difficult to handle when we do that.

(Did you see the defense you liked against Utah carry over?)

I thought our defense has been good against USC, against UCLA and against Utah. You had some bigtime players, (Askia) Book and (Josh) Scott, are really good. They just got away from us tonight but for the most part we played them so much better than the first time. We didn’t defend them, we didn’t play tough, we weren’t physical, we didn’t have confidence. We just didn’t do a lot of things right.

So I don’t look at it as defense, I look at it as we’re a different basketball team now. We’re more confident, we can throw more bodies at your. We can get stops at times and certainly we got some big stops (in overtime).

(How do you keep this momentum going into the Pac-12 tournament?)

Everybody is 0-0, and I’ve said all-year-long that I wish we could start the season over knowing what we know now. I wish this team could go back and have everybody else play our preseason schedule and get their confidence and get the wins. This team had probably the third or fourth-toughest preseason schedule and you had to go through those lumps.

Then we open up conference on the road. There’s a lot to have to withstand. Now you’re going down to Vegas and everybody is 0-0 and we want to fight down there to give ourselves an opportunity to just get to the next game. It’s just get to the next game and that’s what we’re going to do.