THE MODERATOR: We’ll start with opening remarks from Coach regarding tonight’s game and then questions for the Oregon student-athletes. Let’s open it up for questions for Payton and Paul here.
Q. For both of you, what was going on in the final 5:43? Didn’t have a field goal go down in that stretch. Was it what Virginia was doing, or what was the challenge there?
PAYTON PRITCHARD: I think we just started over-dribbling too much. We just got away, what was — what got us there in the first place. I mean, we just forced up some bad shots and it didn’t go down for us.
PAUL WHITE: Yeah, I think during that stretch, there was some possessions where we came down, took some quick shots, maybe some that we didn’t know were about to go up or kind of what Payton said, kind of over-dribbling.
But I think what could have helped us was getting to the free throw line and maybe some offensive rebounds. But, you know, Virginia does a real good job of just making things difficult and kind of stretching possessions out. So I think that played to their strong suit.
Q. Again for both of you, is the emotion right now frustration, disappointment? To come that close and not be able to pull it off.
PAYTON PRITCHARD: For sure, I mean, we’re disappointed. We were right there, down to the wire. We’re going to look back at this and we’re going to be — it’s going to be frustrating for a while now.
But for the way we turned around this season and proved all the doubters wrong and won ten straight to make it this far, we’re going to look at that as a positive. And me personally, I will always remember this team and the run we made.
PAUL WHITE: Yeah, I think the emotions are high. People coming to terms with that this is the last game of the season. This is my last collegiate game, so me and Ehab — I said a couple things to the guys in the locker room, just telling them, if anything, the character that we showed kind of speaks more volumes than the results that happened tonight.
So, you know, we really slugged it out and I think this team going forward is going to be a tremendous team.
Augusta Free Press coverage of the 2019 postseason is presented by Bear Creek. Serving Waynesboro, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and surrounding communities, Bear Creek provides a hassle-free process to help homeowners create outdoor living spaces that bring people together. Schedule a consultation at BearCreek.co.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We’ll open it up for Coach.
Q. Coach, could you see what was going on? Is there any way to try to settle them down there? You’ve got the game so close, those final five and a half minutes to just try to get a ball to go down. What were you trying to get them to do?
COACH ALTMAN: I did a really poor job. We’ve got to get better possessions than that. That’s my job. We got rushed a little bit there and just we had poor possessions. And I told the guys in the locker room, I let them down there. We needed to have some good possessions. We fought our way back. We were in good position, and offensively, you know, we had a couple turnovers, couple late shot clocks where we just threw it up. Just bad possessions.
So disappointed there in myself, disappointed for the guys. We had a couple sets that we just didn’t execute. But we should have been in a better position than that, and we should have got better shots.
I don’t want to take anything away from Virginia. They make a lot of people take bad shots. But we didn’t handle that very well.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for your time.
COACH ALTMAN: You bet.
Share
Contributors
