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Louisville vs. TCU Post-Game Quotes
January 12, 2002 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 12, 2002
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
"The way you have to play this team (TCU) is that you have to run up and down with them. That's our style, but we're still laboring. We need to work on blocking out and getting our butts into our opponents' bodies. It is a good win. The reason we win is because we play incredibly hard, but we win and you have to be happy. I am happy with every win we get."
(On Billy Tubbs) "I wish him luck the rest of the season. Billy Tubbs is an ambassador for the game. He doesn't take himself too serious. He is a heck of a coach, gives his kids a chance to play and lets them have fun."
(on Reece Gaines at the point) "I think he got really tired. He is not used to bringing the ball up and getting pressured. Right away he was gasping for air. He just isn't used to it. It is a very difficult position to play. He is tremendous at the two spot, and that's where he'll probably play most of the time."
(keep Reece at the point?) "I don't think so. I think I'll run Junior (Alhaji Mohammed) until his legs fall off and I'll work with Bryant on his ball handling skills. We'll go with him (Reece Gaines) at the end of the game."
(on Ellis Myles' free throw shooting) "Yesterday he made 19 of 20 in practice. His shot doesn't look bad. Once in awhile he'll snap the ball, but for the most part he has good technique. He just needs to get through this period."
"We did not reach our goals defensively, but we wanted to get 22 assists and we ended up with 21 which is great. Our new guys next year will help us with that."
TCU Head Coach Billy Tubbs
"The thing that got us into trouble and cost us the game is the reason we had to make two comebacks. I thought in the first half, we made some really bad offensive plays during the period they widened the score on us. We went sour, offensively, and it wasn't necessarily missed shots that were hurting us. We missed some free throws during that period, but it was just failure to execute our offense and make smart plays. The same things happened to us after we had closed the game to two, probably with 8 or 10 minutes to go in the game. We made as bad of offensive plays you can make."
"Our guys have to understand it's a very physical game and there's a lot of action and contact that's not going to be called out there. They have to learn that. We had two or three offensive plays that took it from a two-point game. They made some baskets and we're not making any baskets because we're not giving our offense a chance to work. It's a disappointing loss."
"We have some correctable errors. If we make free throws, it's a different ball game. We're leading the conference in free-throw percentage but we couldn't make free throws today. Really didn't get anything out of Bingo (Merriex) today. He goes 1 for 10 but has a great game on the boards with 13 rebounds. So all in all, our guys played hard, I thought we had great effort, if we can just get smart in some situations."
"I think we'll keep playing hard. But this has been a hard takeoff in Conference USA but maybe we're going to meet someone down the line that's supposed to be on the bottom of the conference. We didn't start at the bottom and work up, we started at the top and are working down. So we're getting a rude indoctrination."
