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Louisville vs. Eastern Kentucky - Freedom Hall - Post-Game Quotes
December 30, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 30, 2004
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
"We did a lot of good things in the first half, but our Achilles heel continues to be a lack of blocking out. It's very difficult to comprehend because we're small, we have no reach and we're not blocking out. I think Otis (George) coming back will give us a big lift in the blocking out and rebounding department. Right now, we only have one guy consistently blocking out and that's Taquan Dean. It was a very poor second half, but I'm not going to belabor the point because we've played well all season and we just had a poor second half...But we knew this was going to be a tough game because Eastern plays hard.
On substituting five new players at once early in the second half:
"They weren't blocking out and they were playing like the game was meaningless. They were throwing the ball away and they weren't running the offense. It's senseless to run a pick-and-roll when you don't use the pick. Against good teams you've got to get to the third, fourth, fifth or sixth options and Eastern Kentucky did a good job of taking away our first option. Tonight, we just didn't know how to play with a lead. We played a great first half and our guys have done a great job all season. This was an off night for us in the second half and you have to give credit to Eastern Kentucky for hanging in there."
On EKU's defensive effort against Taquan Dean:
"They played great defense on him tonight. They made it clear early in the game that they weren't going to let him shoot the basketball. That's a credit to them because they took him out of the game and they didn't allow him to score. It wasn't Taquan, it was their defense."
On Louisville's struggles in the second half:
"You're going to have a 10-minute period here and there where nothing goes right. The problem is everything seems to mushroom. When you start to play poorly and the passing is not there and the cutting is not there, things really mushroom and get worse. When you're playing well and moving the ball and cutting, like we were in the first half tonight, you see unbelievable basketball. When you're not doing those things, it goes the other way for you. This was good for us to get played this way so we can now move and do some other things."
Eastern Kentucky Head Coach Travis Ford
"Our guys competed tonight and played hard. Unfortunately, we ran into a very, very good basketball team that plays just as hard every single night."
"We came in and accomplished some things we wanted to. We wanted to come in and rebound the ball well and we did that. We wanted to hold their three-point shooting down and we did a pretty good job. They only made six three's."
"You turn the ball over 24 times against a great team like Louisville, you're in for a long night."
"I scheduled these games (against Florida and Louisville on the road) on purpose. These teams will really exploit your weaknesses. I'll say to our team, `we played two great basketball teams, learn from that'."
