Opening Remarks-
“We made a pretty good run coming out of halftime and cut it to 7, but Blake -- he’s cold-blooded. He drilled a 3 and then he hit another shot, it’s almost like he was playing with us a little bit…They’re a very good basketball team.
“My biggest concern is that this game doesn’t impact our game on Tuesday.”
It was 47-40 -- then what?
“Well, that’s when Blake hit that shot…then we had an opportunity to get a quick shot and Jawad threw that outlet pass to Jackie, and they intercepted and scored. They make you pay quickly for mistakes. If you make a mistake, they’ll make you pay….I do believe we did a pretty good job in our man-to-man defensive set, but when we take bad shots and turn the ball over, they convert that into points.”
Were you happy with how the team had played up to that point (47-40)?
“I was, I was proud of the way we battled…I wish it wasn’t 13 at half. But I thought the fact the team came out and battled, showed some fight, was impressive.”
When you had substituted all 5 players, were you unhappy with the effort?
“I just thought we had fallen apart. I didn’t yell at the guys, I just said, hey, we’ve got to battle, we’ve got to stick together. I didn’t like the fact that [Andre Collins] drove from the corner to under the basket and nobody was there to stop him and he got his own offensive rebound. I wanted to make sure they knew that we needed to stick together and play this game out. It’s hard, especially with a young team. So I said catch your breath, go back in, and play hard.”
They shot 57% for the game -- how much is that them being hot and how much is your defense?
“It’s hard to say until I look at the tape, and that’s not just a kop out…Blake shot 4 of 4 from the 3 point, Drew Nicholas was 3 of 6, they shot 58% from the 3 point line. That’s tough. Some of them were more open shots than I would like, yes. And then their shots in transition—it’s hard to stop people when they’re coming down and getting layups and putbacks in transition. I think when our defense was set, especially in the first half and early the second, was pretty good, but when you turn the ball over and take quick shots, that leads to fast breaks…”
Is there anything specific you can do to clear the guys’ heads before the State game?
“Oh, I don’t know -- maybe, show them positive video clips as opposed to negative clips. Show ‘em some of the highlight clips from A&T -- I don’t know at this point. We may not even address this game and just move on to N.C. State. Those are things my staff and I will discuss tomorrow.”