Opening Remarks
I thought it was a terrific game. I want to congratulate North Carolina, they played their hearts out and I thought we played very well in the second half. We rushed a couple of exchanges offensively where we could have taken a lead. We showed immaturity during that time.
McCants was a warrior. I think a lot of that has to do with his getting healthier. That kid has played with a lot of injury. He is just a warrior and he played a great, great basketball game and so did Felton.
And I think all the kids on both sides should be commended for handling the last eight minutes of the game in such high class fashion. I don't know exactly what happened and it really doesn't matter that much. Some time when a situation like that occurs, the game can go crazy and the kids really handled themselves well. And it is so befitting of the game that these two teams have played against each other. I don't think we played very well defensively at all. We missed a lot of assignments. We did not have the intensity defensively to match their talent.
Did you have any doubts about the last shot?
No, no. We just walked off. That's life. The alarm went off. I just said 'The game's over and they won.' I didn't even want to look at it. They won, the game is over, let's quit fooling around.
About the zone in the first half-
It worked fairly well just to stop penetration, but we should be able to stop penetration without doing that. It was just a compensating move. We should not be making those types of moves.
About defusing the incident in the second half-
It's the players who make the difference. I went to Rashad McCants and said 'Let's do this right.' It all worked out. The story of the game should be Carolina's great win because of the way the last eight minutes were handled.