HEAD COACH STAN HEATH:  Wow, it was a great, great game, and I'm really proud of our team, what a gutsy performance in the second half, struggled in the first half, didn't seem like we were guarding anything and I thought our guys in the second half came out and showed some resolve and some toughness and defended a lot better, came up with more loose balls, and, you know, Shaun's start and Anthony Crater's finish was an incredible way to cap this win off for us. 

 

Q.  Stan, did you call up for Crater to go the? 

COACH HEATH:  Yeah, we wanted to do that.  I felt like it would be better to freeze them a little bit and at the same time try to get the ball out and go right into something quickly. 

He had options.  If somebody helped, we were looking at Gus and Shaun in the corner.  So we had options but he had a lane to the rim and did the right thing. 

 

Q.  Can you talk about how quickly you were able to start the game and did it impress you how effective he was from beyond the arc? 

COACH HEATH:  He was amazing.  I've seen it before.  He's done that before in practices, and he's had a few games.  We played Pittsburgh one game and he lit it up in that game, too.  So we've seen it before.  He's a dead eye guy and he gets it going and he's got a quick release and you better be on him very close. 

It was an amazing start, especially on this stage.  You wouldn't expect that, a sophomore, and his first experience here, he just played a little bit last year.  For him to be on this kind of stage and play like that shows what kind of a guy he is. 

 

Q.  How much of a conscious decision was it to try to work the ball inside in the second half once Yarou left the game?

COACH HEATH:  We want to go inside anyway.  The pressure was keeping us away from the basket but as the game wore on, it seemed like the pressure wasn't quite the same to get the ball reversed.  We wanted to go inside.  Gilchrist is our go to guy.  We feel like even with    Famous didn't have a great game but Anderson, those guys can still be effective around the basket.  We wanted to go inside and we thought that, especially when Yarou left the game, we really felt they were a little bit thin there and outside of Pena we felt we could score or get fouled.

 

Q.  Anthony, did you have a game like that before? 

ANTHONY CRATER:  Yeah, once or twice back in high school.  Definitely not in college.

 

Q.  How many in high school did you have or were they for state championships or anything like that?

ANTHONY CRATER:  Two or three. 

 

Q.  Was there something you did to get them out of their rhythm in the second half? 

COACH HEATH:  We were constantly changing our defense.  They caught fire and our "man" was nonexistent in the first half but the second half we tried two or three things against the ball screens.  That was the big thing.  The other thing we did is stop go for fakes and stayed on our feet and make them shoot over our length and I think we did a much better job of keeping them out of the lane and shrinking the court in the half court defense to see more bodies when they were trying to penetrate. 

 

Q.  Shaun, you guys have been in close games all year but they've never seemed to go your way, this is coming albeit a little bit late but can you talk about how nice it is? 

SHAUN NORIEGA:  It's really nice.  The way our season went, to get this win is just, you know, it's   

ANTHONY CRATER:  It's phenomenal.

SHAUN NORIEGA:  It's been a long season and to come out here and get this win and upset Villanova, feel really good about that.  

 

Q.  Coach, what are you looking to do tomorrow to be offensively effective against them? 

COACH HEATH:  Cincinnati has not only athletes on those wings, but they have that size.  They've got Yancy Gates and Ibrahima Thomas and to be honest with you, I haven't lifted a finger on Cincinnati.  We were focused on Villanova but in the next hour or so I'll break out film and look at them more closely. 

I know they're good.  They've had a great season, we played 'em very well down at their place and probably in the last 5 minutes it got away a little bit.  If our team can learn to close and finish and not have drouts we can compete against anybody. 

 

Q.  As was alluded to, you've been very tough all year but maybe without the "W" to show it, how do you guys think of yourselves given this is such a tough conference to say you've been able to hang in so many games in the Big East that's a testament as to how good you are? 

COACH HEATH:  We took this game that the season, 2010, 2011, is over, we're in a new season, we're not going to look backwards, we're going to look forward.  That stunk. 

It was a miserable feeling because we gave a lot of effort and we always came up short.  We're going to put that behind us, we're 1 0 now and we're going to get ready to go 2 0. 

 

Q.  Anthony, what did you see in the last two plays?  Run us through those last two baskets, how you remember them. 

ANTHONY CRATER:  The play where I stole it, I seen I had a step on Pena and he jumped too early so I made the steal and made a layup and the last play the screen was designed for me to come off the screen but the rim was open and I took it.

 

Q.  Were you surprised? 

ANTHONY CRATER:  Yes, sir, yes. 

 

 

 

HEAD COACH JAY WRIGHT:  Well, a great performance in the second half by South Florida and a very poor performance on our part.  They pounded us inside.  They pounded us on the glass and they made all the plays down the stretch.  We couldn't get a stop, just couldn't get a stop down the stretch and, you know, that's    it's one of those things, when things go bad    when it rains it powers, that's what happened, we just got to fight through it and keep tryin' to battle, keep tryin' to get mentally tougher.  It's tough when you got young guys going through games like this, but that's life, life is tough, we've got to keep our heads up and take what comes next. 

 

Q.  Jay, what did you see as the main reason for the offense stalling out in the second half? 

COACH WRIGHT:  Um, the main reason I can't say.  The second important reason is I just thought we got tentative with the lead.  We haven't won a game in so long.  Everybody got a little scared, a little short on their shots and we just didn't play with confidence with the lead. 

 

Q.  Coach, do you think the interior play can make some improvements before the NCAA Tournament, through practice time and things like that? 

COACH WRIGHT:  I think we got to get    we need to get Mouph back, that wasn't the kind of game you want to lose him in, but we had enough people that we should have been able to stop them in the second half but it has to, it has to. 

 

Q.  Jay, what is Mouph's status?  What's the nature of the injury and what is his prognosis?

COACH WRIGHT:  I think he has two injuries, you know, I don't know, maybe a concussion and something on his ribs, I don't know, they told me    they said at halftime he will be okay, and then when we came back out he wasn't on the bench and they said he can't play, he came out about five minutes later. 

 

Q.  Corey, when you start to feel it slipping away, what can you guys do to try stem the tide, what was going on in your minds? 

COREY STOKES:  Just get stops and keep a positive attitude and keep grindin'.  That's all you can do, keep a positive attitude, keep grindin' and get stops.

 

Q.  Jay, the way the season is going the last few weeks, you guys had a start off great, and the last few weeks have been tough how important was it to come into the tournament and get some confidence and momentum back and how tough is it that you weren't able to do that and now you have to prepare for the next week or so? 

COACH WRIGHT:  Yeah, we were feeling good coming into this game, we had great practices and we were looking forward to coming here and playing a number of games, we hoped, we had hoped. 

You know, this wasn't in the plan, you know, so I don't have the answer right now for what we're going to do next but we came in here expecting to win and now we have to deal with what comes next. 

 

Q.  Maalik, what did you see on that sideline out of bounds play? 

MAALIK WAYNS:  We run that play every day.  I didn't see anybody open.  I thought he had a point guard on him, I made a bad pass. 

 

Q.  Corey I asked you before the season what the cause was for the slump last season and obviously you're in a slump again at the end of this season, what do you think the cause is? 

COREY STOKES:  Teams are getting better.  We're getting better.  Might not seem like it but we are getting better.  South Florida played good defensively in the second half.  They got stops and we didn't get stops at the end of the game. 

We're going to continue to work in practice and get ready for the tournament and keep a positive attitude. 

 

Q.  Jay, the time out right before the foul shot that you guys take the lead, you don't have any left, what did you expect them to do?  What did they do? 

COACH WRIGHT:  We expected them to run a screen on the weak side like they had a couple times before or drive the ball to the basket, and they drove the ball, we switched the screen, they drove the ball and kid made a great play. 

We had Dominic Cheek on him.  He made a drive on a 6'6" kid.  Did a pretty good job. 

 

Q.  You guys, you come up here hoping to stay all week, how disappointing is to be 1 and out today? 

COREY STOKES:  You know, we came up here with confidence.  Coach Wright told us to go in and play Villanova basketball with pride for forty minutes and the outcome of the game we lost but we're not going to put our heads down.  We're going to get back to work tomorrow in practice and continue to work hard. 

 

Q.  Jay, everybody says you're in, you're fine.  Is any part of you going to be nervous losing five in a row that anything crazy might happen next? 

COACH WRIGHT:  I purposely haven't focused on it.  We haven't talked about any of it, we were concentrating on the Big East tournament.  So I know this sounds bizarre but I don't know where we stand with any of that and I will find out tomorrow but I would say after this, there is a little concern and I just have to look at the situation. 

 

Q.  Although you will be playing presumably good teams in the NCAA Tournament, do you think your team will benefit not to have to play Big East teams for a stretch, for a while? 

COACH WRIGHT:  That's going to have to be our advantage to rest up and get everybody healthy because that's going to be an advantage.  I still think for our group it would have been nice to get a few wins and get ourselves feeling good.  That would have been better but we're going to have to settle for that, rest up, get healthy and wherever we go be ready to play. 

 

Q.  Jay, when Anthony Crater was in here earlier he said he was surprised to see a wide open lane on that final play.  Were you surprised that it was that open that he was able to get that that easily? 

COACH WRIGHT:  Yeah, yes. 

 

Q.  Was it a lapse, someone missing an assignment? 

COACH WRIGHT:  They set a screen on the weak side and I haven't    I haven't seen the film yet but the man guarding the screener, we were switching that    switching that so the guy that was switching out, the man that takes the screener is responsible for help there but also, Dominic Cheek is 6'6".  That's a 6'6" guy on a 6'2" point guard.  I thought he would keep him in front of him, too, but you got to give the kid credit he made a great play.

 

Q.  Jay, what is your biggest concern with this team right now? 

COACH WRIGHT:  I got a lot right now, but the biggest is to get everybody healthy, get Mouph healthy, Stokes healthy.  It's their psyche.  I don't think any of us have finished a season this way so we've got to get their heads right, their heads were great coming into this and we got to make sure we get over this and get back to work and keep gettin' better.