Dana Altman talked to 590's Matt Perrault this afternoon about the end of the Jays' season, a disappointing effort against the Florida Gators. For the benefit of those of you out of the Omaha area, since the station doesn't do live streaming, here's some of the salient points:
- The Florida fans booed radio guys Jimmy Motz and T.Scott Marr when they entered the building, after camping out overnight for tickets to the game. Whether the atmosphere intimidated the Jays or not is debatable, but that's pretty hilarious.
- "We got kicked...right from the start. We didn't hit any shots, we've relied on Booker and P to hit shots and they weren't hitting them."
- "We had turnovers...that just didn't give us an opportunity. Some of it was their pressure, but most of it was us telegraphing passes, standing straight up and down."
- The team didn't exceed his expectations, "but before I say they fell short, it was a long season and we had a lot of ups and a lot of downs. I wanted to win 30 ball games! But the two things I keep coming back to are, we made progress which is a positive. We came along...guys made individual progress so that's a positive." On the negative, he feels they never really got any one phase of their game established. He says they never really had anything they could hang their hat on and say, "OK, this is our base, we're doing this well, lets build on this."
- Just because the players are a year older doesn't mean they're a year better. He says its a critical time for the team, without Nick Bahe, Pierce Hibma and Dane Watts. They don't lose a lot statistically, but those guys brought a lot of intangibles and leadership that someone will have to replace.
- He's not sure who will establish themselves as the leader. Its hard for a coach to say "You're going to be a leader", those things have to be earned.
The entire interview can be heard by clicking on the link at the top.
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