Penn State Men's Basketball
JSU Coaches Postgame Press Conference
vs. Jacksonville State – November 12, 2018
Jacksonville State Head Coach Ray Harper
Q: Rasir Bolton had a big night tonight, did you expect him to have that kind of performance?
A: We knew he could shoot the basketball and he played awfully well. I thought in the first half we had some defensive breakdowns just from our communications standpoint and then we just gave up too many offensive rebounds. [We were] a little bit better with that in the second half with our communication but I thought our kids played extremely hard and gave themselves a chance down the stretch.
Q: Jason Burnell controlled the paint pretty well tonight. What do you think he did well?
A: He played well. I think he's a much better player than what he played tonight, but he's a competitor. He can play inside-out, he can score the ball from the perimeter, he can drive it, he's a very good player. He had a double-double tonight, I think he's capable of that most nights. We were so bad in our opener that I was proud of the way the guys responded, not just tonight but Saturday and Sunday. We had a couple tough days as far as workouts and I thought they locked in, were ready to play and hopefully we'll get better going forward.
Q: What's the challenge in dealing with the physicality of a guy like Lamar Stevens?
A: He's a really good player. We were going to double him from a lot of different spots, a lot of different ways. For the most part I thought we did a good job, [we] lost him a couple of times, [he] made threes, which he can do but we wanted to take away the paint. If he made a three every now-and-then that was okay, but we wanted to take away the paint. Our doubles were good for the most part and again a couple of miscues about when to double and who was supposed to be in the double team, they made us pay when we did it.
Q: From your perspective how do you think Lamar [Stevens] was able to dribble out of some of those double teams? It looked like throughout the game whenever you guys were trying to double, he was making a clear effort to dribble out of it instead of immediately looking to pass.
A: We said when he uses his escape dribble we'll get out of the trap, and we did that pretty well. Again he's a really good player and at 6-8, 240, whatever he is, he's going to present some challenges not only to us but to a lot of teams. He's playing really well so for the most part I thought we did a pretty good job on him. And then we let [Rasir] Bolton go crazy but other than that I thought we were okay.