What Josh Eilert Said Following the Loss to Monmouth

West Virginia University head coach Josh Eilert Monmouth postgame quick hits

The West Virginia Mountaineers (1-1) fell to the Monmouth Hawks (1-1) Friday night 73-65. 

Opening Statement

First of all, I thank the fans for coming out tonight on a Friday night and giving us all their support. We're going through some challenges here and like I said on the radio I don't want to make excuses but we got a short bench and we're trying to manage that as best we can and try to figure out how to win with all these challenges and certainly this team is faced lot adversity and challenges thus far and this is one that we're going to try to dissect and figure out and move on and try to learn from this. I mean, that's all you can do with loss. I told the guys you know, I'm just as guilty as everybody else. I gotta figure out what I can do better. What I can do better for them and, we need to all have a heart to heart and start figuring out. I said, I question whether they liked each other. Sometimes in transition, we're not pushing ahead, and I think they do, it's just on the basketball floor at times it doesn't look like they do, so we got to figure this thing out and we will.

The lack of touches for Jesse Edwards in the second half

They knew in half court man a man we're gonna try to get him as many touches as possible and then they saw the weakness and that part of the strategy, so they went zone early and often and I don't think we'd necessarily got bad shots, but we didn't we didn't knock them down, and credit to them. Credit to coach Rice and their preparation and their squad. They came in with an extreme amount of confidence and they continued to chip and chip and chip and to the point where we finally broke and credit them and their program and hats off to them.

Offensive Struggles

I keep telling the guys that each and every day we gotta figure out how to play off each other. In basketball, nothing's ever perfect in terms of the way you draw. So, defense can take you out of something and then you gotta read off each other and get the right look or a good look. And trying to figure out how we get that cohesive synergy so to speak is something we've struggled with at times and where we're gonna have to figure it out sooner than later because I guarantee we're probably gonna see a lot more to 2-3 zone.

Monmouth's offensive success

We knew coming into it that their bread and butter turned people over and getting out in the open floor and they did exactly that and they knew our rotational situation and they took advantage of it and it's a smart coaching. They got downhill, they put pressure on us, they moved us. I went 2-3 zone at one time and then we couldn't get a rebound. And I've as you could see on several those possessions that we continue to struggle with defensive rebounding. I mean, I think there's two free throw line box outs that we missed twice in a row that just it's demoralizing for a coach and demoralizing for our team and then not mentioned every time we thought we were you know, turning the game a little bit and going down to tie it we turn it over, we turn it over and it would just kill our momentum whatsoever. Any momentum that we had - it would just stymie up

Monmouth guard Xander Rice's 30-point performance

I thought we had good game planning against him, but we didn't work on trapping any ball screens or anything like that and maybe we should out but you gotta be careful with that with getting Jesse in foul trouble because they're always going to put him in the ball screen. He had 30 points, but he also had six assists and one turnover. So, he got other people involved too. So, he wasn't taking every shot and so he was fairly efficient. He shot 50% from the field, 50% from three and nine for 10 from line.

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