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GEORGIA STATE (24-10) 74, UT ARLINGTON (21-13) 61
Sun Belt Conference Championships - Championship Game
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Lakefront Arena o New Orleans, La.

POSTGAME QUOTES

UTA Head Coach Scott Cross
""Congratulations to Georgia State. They played a great game today. Their defense gave us trouble. They came out and executed. They played very hard defensively. Coach Hunter did a great job. It just wasn't our night tonight, but just like yesterday we thank the good Lord for the wins. We thank him also for the lessons to be learned from this game. We had a great group of seniors on our team headlined by these two guys who are going to go on and do great things in life and in basketball. I'm proud that I had the opportunity to coach these guys. What they have accomplished here is second-to-none. They have elevated the program to new heights. It is not even near the same program as when they came in here. They have done some amazing things. I think this game is a product of that - these guys wanted to win the game so badly that it became difficult to hit shots. That is the name of the game. Sometimes in basketball it is who can hit shots. Georgia State did and it was their night. Our hats are off to them."

On his plan for plays in the game: "Well no, it was just the fact that we were behind by so much. We felt like that was our only chance to extend our pressure. Hopefully get some five second counts or maybe a quick trap and a steal. They [Georgia State] do a great job taking care of the basketball. We couldn't get the steals. That was the bottom line. We had one steal the entire game. I think that was the biggest factor of our offensive. We didn't get enough stops defensively. We have been able to create a lot of offense with our defense. We weren't very active defensively today. When our feet stop moving and we are not bouncing around, the other end seems to be affected as well. We didn't move with speed offensively. They are a great defensive team. They did a great job matching up with us. I felt like we took some tough shots early on. You start missing some shots and it becomes a little bit tougher. I think these guys all wanted to win the game extremely bad. They have been here for four years and accomplished a whole lot. This is the one thing that has eluded them. They probably wanted it too much. It became tight. We needed to be aggressive and get that ball to the basket. We just weren't able to do it the way we needed to."

On issues with depth: "It possibly could have. You never really know. It is easy to second guess. We maybe could have used Mairega [Clarke]. He could have given us a spark defensively. That is probably about the only thing we could have done. These guys have logged a lot of minutes. I know Simonds fouled out yesterday. To me it's, what is six more minutes that you are playing? This is the last game you are guaranteed. I do think we fell short there. I do think we had some more to give and we didn't have the type of energy we needed. If you are not bouncing around or flying around defensively it is going to be hard to win any basketball game."

On Georgia State driving the offense: "It probably benefitted them. Simonds is a guy that takes care of the ball. They have a lot of guards that are really solid. That is a smart philosophy: make us defend you for thirty seconds and then if we take a quick bad one then they are making us defend them for another thirty seconds. It makes a lot of sense. That is why we talked to our guys about taking good shots. In the first two games I don't remember us hardly taking any bad shots. Today we forced shots and took bad shots. We left the easy buckets for them. If it didn't lead to an easy bucket, then it leads to thirty seconds of defense. This made it very difficult."

Senior Guard Erick Neal
On what happened to their usual 3-point shots: "I felt like it had nothing to do with their defense. We ought to beat their defense. We have been here four years. We shot and missed at the ball on their defense. I felt like it was just us. They just had an edge. Playing so many minutes, the edge was making us tired. You just want to be able to follow through on the shots. It threw our jumper off. I felt like that was it. A basketball game is a game of runs. We didn't have enough runs today."