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Louisville vs. Charlotte - Freedom Hall - Post-Game Quotes
March 03, 2005 | Men's Basketball
March 3, 2005
Recap | Box Score | Notes
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
"This was probably the most entertaining Senior Night that I've ever been involved with. It was really a great night and I'm very happy for our seniors. Larry O'Bannon had a very special night and these guys feed off each. They know who the hot person is, they run their offense, they find that person and they're an extremely unselfish group. (Charlotte) did a great job of running their offense tonight and they're a very difficult team. They can get you in foul trouble. They shoot shots and make shots that, we see it and we still don't believe it when we watch it on film, but it happens all the time."
(On what U of L tried to do defensively) "We just wanted to mix it up because when watching them on film, they do a good job of getting to the (foul) line and they get you in foul trouble. Sometimes you play zone (defense) and a guy makes a long shot and first thing you want to do is come out of it. But we were rebounding out of it and we felt like it was the best thing for us to play, especially to stay out of foul trouble because we don't have deep frontcourt."
"Larry was a big part of our success tonight...He was brilliant in all phases of the game and it really is a Hollywood ending for a very special man...And our fans were absolutely spectacular tonight."
(On the play of Ellis Myles) "He's playing great basketball right now. He's handling, he's passing it and he's a big reason why we're winning right now. I think Francisco, Larry and Taquan get a lot of credit, but if you take Ellis out of this lineup, you have last year's team and last year's team had no low-post presence. There were so many times tonight where we threw it inside and (Charlotte) came after Ellis late and he found Larry or Taquan. Ellis Myles, pound-for-pound and inch-for-inch, is playing great basketball."
"Winning this title was great because sometimes Cincinnati and us are up against it because of the unbalanced schedule. You don't always get the breaks. This year, we had to go to UAB and play in front of their largest crowd ever, we go to Cincinnati and it's always all-out, we go to Memphis and it's their largest crowd of the year and we also played at Florida. We play great road basketball, but it's been very difficult with our schedule on the road. Then, we also got lucky at times and blew some people out that we didn't expect to blow out. This is a veteran team that understands what it takes to win. It's great to win a championship, but we can't fall into a trap right now. The trap is that we're coming off a very emotional Senior Night and now we play against a team on the Senior Brunch, with the game set for 11 a.m. Central on Saturday, we don't have any time to prepare and DePaul is a terrific basketball team. We've got one game left and we want to keep on winning. We're going to have a hell of a fight in Chicago because they're an excellent ball club."
Charlotte Head Coach Bobby Lutz
"It was obviously a very difficult night for us. I thought that Louisville was tremendous and I expected them to be that way with senior night and a great crowd. I was a little disappointed that we did not execute a little better against them. We knew that we had to play really well with everything that was on the line to win the game, but obviously we fell a little short of that."
"The little flurry at the end of the first half was huge. We were still hanging around - six down, four down, two down - staying with them. That little flurry put us down 13 points and made it very difficult to come back against a team as good as they are. They made a lot of shots. They really shot the ball extremely well which we knew they were capable of."
"You have to give them credit. They are terrific and they took us out of things that we liked to do. Their zones were effective. (Larry) O'Bannon was great. They played very well and they deserved to win."
"We lost O'Bannon in transition and they did a great job at getting to the corner. We try to do the same thing, and they do a great job. They have so many weapons and we tried zone, and even a little junk. It all just did not matter. He is having a great year and his career night this evening."
