Virginia Tech men's basketball head coach Mike Young, forward Keve Aluma and guard Hunter Cattoor met with the media on Friday following their first-round setback against No. 6 Texas in the NCAA Tournament in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Read some of what they had to say:
MIKE YOUNG
(Opening statement) Longhorns outplayed us, needless to say. I tip my cap to Coach Beard, his staff and his players. They were better than we were this afternoon and go back and look at it, but, you know, that's a lot more that needs to be said.
(On Texas doing anything differently in the second half to disrupt offensive flow) I will see him, I will see Coach Beard soon and we'll talk about it. I think you're going to pick your poison, okay? You're either going to take care of Mutts and crowd them or you're going to take care of the arc, all right, and he chose the latter. He would double Mutts and Aluma. The first early second half they had a good one. We got it out of there, but it was violent and they came out of it in pretty good shape. I think it's pretty telling, we only shot 12 and that is -- that's well below our average, and we only made four, that also is well below our average. And then I thought it was a bad call. The officials said it was a bad call, Aluma's second foul. Now the dynamics of the darn thing changed, you've got to sit him for the last six minutes, but that certainly didn't beat us.
KEVE ALUMA
(On if the team defended Texas well behind the arc) I don't think so necessarily. I mean, Jones, he was five for six in the first half and then they banked in that one. I don't think so. You can always be better, but no, I don't think we defended them as good as we should have.
HUNTER CATTOOR
(On what was missing today) I would just say connectivity on the defensive end. I think we were super connected down in Brooklyn. Today I thought we got off to a good start. Scoreless to the first media and then during the game they were just getting their shots down. Credit to them, they made shots tonight.
(On the nine second-half turnovers) Yeah, I felt we weren't strong with the ball today, including myself. I had three turnovers. Can't be happening in a tournament game like that. They just played pressure. Like I said before, they weren't going to make anything easy and we were going to have to take care of the ball.
