A-10 TOURNAMENT: Analyzing the field in Pittsburgh
Joey Gruden and Trey Landers didn’t attend Saturday’s game because they were sick, but are back at practice. Darrell Davis played only five minutes Saturday and didn’t return to the game after running into a blind screen in the first half. He had concussion symptoms and missed practice Monday because he’s going through concussion protocol.
“He looked good today,” Miller said. “He was passing the ball in shooting drills. I don’t suspect it being a big issue. I think it’s precautionary right now. I’m hoping he’ll be back my mid week or late in the week.”
Here are some highlights from the coach’s show:
On VCU win: "Senior night with all the emotions of the families coming into town, your biggest concern was, 'Could we run out of gas too early? Could we short circuit and have guys do things they weren't supposed to be doing?' There's so much you can get caught up. I thought our guys did a good job. ... We led the entire game, start finish, which is hard to do. They made their run. They changed their defense up. Their matchup zone with about 10 minutes to go got us standing around a little bit, but we made enough plays to get the win. ... When you're able to win the game, cut your nets down in your own arena, have your seniors cut the nets down, it's almost a sigh of relief as a coach. Thanks goodness it all went right."
On transitioning to George Washington game: "I told them, 'Now look fellas, we're going to have to find a way to come off this cloud fast. We have another one. It matters. We don't want to lose momentum. GW is playing as well anybody in the league.'"
On losing 87-81 to GW: "GW played well. We had a lot to do with them playing well. ... You take a deep breath. One loss doesn't define your season, just like one win doesn't."
On returning to practice Monday: "We know our backs are going to be against the wall in almost every game now. They worked extremely hard today. They were very physical. Guys played hard. They were cranky, so I know the message is being sent."
On the big picture: "It's tough to win 24 games. You win 80 percent of your regular-season games and you go 15-3 in conference, you did some things well."
On voting for the all-conference awards: "There's going to be some hard voting. We turned in our stuff this morning. We're not allowed to vote for our own players. It's tough. You have to pick and choose. Sometimes you want to value winning along with all this other stuff."
On his players being honored: "Somebody on our team's got to be pretty good. If you talk to the other coaches in our league, most of them are really ready for Scoochie and Kyle and Kendall and Charles to get the heck out of here. There's a lot of valuable players on our team. Scoochie is far and away the most valuable player on our team. Through the adversity, he hasn't missed one game. He has been the one cog that's been there all the night. I would put him up as player of the year. He's my player of the year."
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