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University of Louisville Men's Basketball Post-Game Quotes
January 25, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 25, 2006
Louisville head coach Rick Pitino
"A little update, David Padgett hurt his knee in the first half. He tried to go in the second half, but could not go. I don't think it's anything serious, I'm not sure what it is. Hopefully tomorrow it feels better. We played great defense tonight, great man, great zone. We gave up a lot of second shots."
"Eric Hicks is inch for inch, pound for pound the toughest ball player in America. He is a tough son of a gun. Blocking him out is a very difficult assignment. You have to do it with three guys. He's like a great lineman. He's an unbelievable rebounder."
"This was a great win for us, we needed it, obviously and we came through with great defense."
(On Taquan Dean) "He's great, really out of shape. We kept trying to get him 30 second blows of offense and defense. And under the circumstances, we would have struggled without him tonight. Had a great practice, I knew he'd be out of shape. A lot of people look at his stats and say he wasn't playing great anyway. You've got to understand what he means to our basketball team. We're one of the youngest teams in America he's heart and soul of our team. You take away the heart and soul of our team and we still played those top 10 teams tough without him. So we can't complain about that. That's the breaks of the game - injuries."
" Bryan Harvey played really well tonight. He's been practicing much better of late."
"The reason we've been struggling with our presses is we press on our made baskets. We're shooting such terr. With Taquan Dean in it helps us tremendously."
(On Juan Palacios) "We're really working hard. He traveled a couple of times on head fakes. Tello really is same player he was last year, but doesn't jump as high. He never had a chance to work on anything because of that injury. He's coming back. He's really starting to work harder on his offensive moves. It will come, this whole process is because he missed half a season and he never got better because of it. He was very active tonight."
(On defense) "We had 36 deflections. They scored on 2 of 3 underneath out of bounds plays, wide open layups. So we played really good defense tonight against a tough ball club."
"Chad got busted in the mouth again. He's hanging in there, being tough. Tello's got to get tougher. I kid around with him a lot of times that he's playing like a kid from a rich neighborhood in Long Island rather than Colombia, but he played hard tonight. I think he's working really hard, he's coming around, his ankle's getting better. He's working really hard and it showed tonight."
"One thing about this conference - we can complain all we want, but it's really a compliment to their program the way they schedule. It's tough to win on the road. West Virginia goes to UCLA and beats them and they're life and death to beat South Florida. Villanova is life and death to beat South Florida. To win on the road in the Big East is really difficult because everybody is so tough-minded, so physical. Rutgers and Pitt, they tell me are the two toughest places to play on the road. So you go to Rutgers, you go to Villanova, then it gets a lot easier - at Syracuse, at West Virginia, at UConn. Let's face it, we had to have tonight, we've got to sweep the board at home and try to pull an upset on the road. You win any game on the road in this conference and it's an upset."
Cincinnati head coach Andy Kennedy
(On turnovers) "They were certainly forced. We got a feel just based on what they've done in the past that when they make baskets, they're going to 2-2-1 and it's back to that 2-3 and when they did they were going to put pressure on us with that. It's very uncharacteristic of our team. Coming into tonight, our last three games, we turned it over in single digits. I thing we turned it over tonight more than our last three games combined. It's very uncharacteristic of our group. And it was across the board. Our playmaker, Devan Downey who is touted by many as one of the best freshmen in the country, myself included, he had a freshman moment tonight. He was 1 for 9 with five turnovers. So then you go to plan `B' your all-league guy James White and he's 2 for 8 with five turnovers. And they you go to plan `C' Jihad Muhammad and he has six turnovers. So we were running out of options. We knew coming into the game that this was a very important game for Louisville. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. We knew coach Pitino would have his team prepared, I knew Dean would play and play well. So there really were no surprises. Our guys just did not handle it well. One thing led to another and one thing that our team cannot survive is compounding mistakes, allowing one to turn into another and I think you saw a good example of that tonight. That's why we walked out of here in a fashion that was not becoming of this team."
"We missed Armein Kirkland tonight. We've missed him the prior three games he hasn't played and we'll miss him the next game. HE was a vital part of what we were doing offensively and defensively. Armein really is the guy who initiates against pressure. So tonight we certainly missed him. Because of his size and he's strong with the ball, we would hope to get through the first wave of traps without him. But he's not here. We thought we were prepared for guys getting in the right spots. Our guys' approach was not as strong as it needed to be."
