Opening statement:
“Obviously we weren’t moving very well in the first half, we didn’t do anything well. We put them on the line. I think they shot 23 free throws in the first half. We can’t play like that. That’s not our game. We did a good job in the second half coming out. It was very important in those first four minutes. We played with the intensity level necessary to give us some hope we could come back. I thought we had a chance to win that game with three minutes or so left when we were only down by four, but we didn’t do a good job with our offense in that situation. I thought we took a couple of bad shots. We could’ve gotten better shots, and we paid the price. Hopefully today was a god indication of where we can be as we go on this year. I’m not concerned about next year. I’m concerned about this year. We play four of our next six at home, and hopefully this game will show us what we have to do. I told the guys not to take any satisfaction in the comeback because we didn’t win. But I also told them that hopefully they understand where we are as a basketball team in terms of what we can do when we put our minds to it, and that’s going to be important whatever we play the rest of the way.”
What was the halftime discussion?
“Discussion? There wasn’t a discussion. It was a one-way conversation about how we represent a great program that won a national championship a few years a go. We’ve been to Final Four. All those things came up, and the point was that what went on in the first half was not right. We can play better than that – I’m not saying we should come in here and beat Carolina, but we certainly can play better than that.”
On the second half pressure defense:
“You always second guess yourself – “Why didn’t we start that earlier, that might have gotten us going. But we got in foul trouble really quick, and I was worried about fouling more if we pressed. When they’ve got guys like Melvin Scott and Rashad McCants, you really worry about how much you can leave guys open in transition – and there is open transition when you press. You don’t steal it every time. So I was concerned with that. We did a good job once we started pressing. I’ll have to look at that and see whether we should’ve pressed more in the first half.”