Post-Game Quotesheet
12/1/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 1, 2007
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POST-GAME QUOTESHEET
Pitt vs.
Quoting Pitt Head Coach Jamie Dixon:
Opening Statement:
"I thought we really played well at the end of the first half and then throughout the second half.
On DeJuan Blair playing immediately after his grandfather's funeral:
"DeJuan said he wanted to play, which I'm proud of, but I also felt he should be there for his family too. I attended the service, and I was struck by how proud of DeJuan his family and friends from the community are. That's the way it should be too. He's a great kid who not only excels on the court but also as a person."
On Pitt struggling early:
"I don't think we necessarily came out lacking energy. In fact, I think we might have had a bit too much energy from the start. Some of the mistakes we were making, the turnovers, getting caught out of position on ball screens, come from being too aggressive. We just had to slow down and get back to playing our game and the rest took care of itself."
On defending Tyrone Kent:
"They've had some success with their smaller line-up and I think they're going to stick with it. Tyrone Kent is a very good player, and we thought coming in he would be the focal point of their offense. I thought they did a good job getting the ball to him early. We had some team defensive breakdowns that you can't pin on just one guy, but we adjusted and shut him down the rest of the way."
On
"I think depth did have something to do with it declining. It's hard to keep your legs when there isn't a lot of depth on the bench. I also think being on the road for as long as they have contributed to that, too. Also, they knocked down some very tough shots early on, which is something that's difficult to maintain for 40 minutes.
On playing Duquesne:
"It's very exciting for the city, but we just look at it as another challenging game on our schedule. We know we need to get better. Monday's practice has to be better than today's game; and Tuesday's practice has to be better than Monday's. We're always looking for ways to get better and we know we can never be satisfied."
Quoting Pitt's Sam Young:
On Pitt's start:
"We maybe were a little bit sluggish at they start and they definitely came in ready to play. Going up against a ranked team I'm sure they saw this as a chance to make a name for themselves. We were able to weather the storm early though, get back to playing our kind of basketball and make sure that didn't happen."
On getting a better start to a game:
"That's very important for us. Hopefully we learned our lesson today that you can't start off slowly or else you're going to be in trouble. With some of the teams we have on our schedule, if we don't focus for all 40 minutes we're going to get blown out."
On what turned the game in Pitt's favor:
"It wasn't anything the coach said to us that got us going. We're our own toughest critics and we saw this team hanging around, thinking they could beat us. If we didn't start to get ourselves together and get back to playing the way right, we realized they might actually have been right. We motivated ourselves to get back into things."
Quoting Pitt's Tyrell Biggs:
On starting for DeJuan Blair:
"DeJuan's a great player. I just tried to stay focus on both ends of the floor and do what I could to pick up the slack for him. My goal was just to make sure the team didn't miss a beat with him not being in from the start."
On playing center:
"I have a little bit of a different mentality when I play center. I try to bang down low a little more, get my shots in closer to the basket and rebound the ball. I'm comfortable playing either position, but it's important for me to recognize that the expectations are a little different."
Quoting Pitt's DeJuan Blair:
On playing in this game following his grandfather's funeral:
"I played this game for him. My performance today was dedicated to his memory. It was tough when I first got to the gym today, but I just had to play through it. Knowing my granddad, I know that he would have wanted me to go out there and give it everything I have. My coaches and teammates too did a great job of making me feel comfortable, and fortunately I was able to deliver."
Quoting Toledo Head Coach Stan Joplin
Opening Comments:
"Pitt is obviously a very good team. Defensively, they did a nice job on and off the ball and also with rebounding. We just tried to come in here and not give dunks off steals. We wanted to let them score against the half-court defense. I think ultimately their best shot was a missed shot.
"In the first half think our defense played solid, but the second chance points really hurt us. In the second half we were just dog tired. There's not much you can do, it was as though we were running in quicksand. We played against a very strong and athletic team who does a great job rallying to the ball. I think often times when you have a young team such as ours they get all their energy from the offense. We need to get energy from our defense, especially in rebounding."
On the second half:
"Pitt had a lot to do with our performance in the second half, being the strongest team we have faced thus far. I also think the traveling had something to do with it and the fact that we have a lot of hurt players right now. It would have been a lot worse without those long T.V. timeouts so we really tried to use that to our advantage. We are usually a second half team but Pitt wasn't turning the ball over at all and had a lot of good shots. We struggled but it was not bas bad as I had thought it would be."
On
"It's tough, because as a coach you have to try and put the players in a position for success. We had a lot of missed lay-ups and open jump-shots tonight but I think we've really been caught off-guard by the fact that a lot of our players are not available. You just need to be patient and do the teaching to make sure you learn from your mistakes. We have to work with the hand we're dealt with, which means taking all the bumps and bruises along the way. We've played some of the top teams in leagues and that's not the type of schedule that you'd want with a team that has walk-ons and no red-shirt freshmen."
