University of Louisville Men's Basketball Post-Game Quotes
February 02, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 2, 2008
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Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
"Obviously our respect level for Rutgers is very high because of the way they've been playing. We were ready to play from the opening tip. They have been playing terrific basketball lately. (They had) a good, decisive win at Pitt, an overtime win at Seton Hall, a buzzer loss at DePaul and a win over Villanova, so they have been playing outstanding ball. We wanted to play great defense from opening tipoff and we did."
(Re: defense) "Good shots are the difference. When you take the shots you take against UConn then you can never get the press on. We are good shooting team if we take unchallenged shots. Teams like Seton Hall and even Rutgers can make challenged shots. We are not a team that can make challenged shots. We didn't do a great job tonight but some of our subs that don't play a lot took a lot of challenged shots. We had like nine or 10 and we want to keep it under six. Most team average 10 to 15 per game. But we aren't a good team when we take challenged shots. We shoot a high percentage and get our pressure on. That is a factor in the game. We are very good on back pursuit especially when Andre and Preston are in the game. They are great back pursuit guys. Jerry and Edgar do a good job in front. Those guys do a good job coming from behind as well. That is the key to any press is back pursuit. If you are great back pursuit team, then you get a two shots, a shot from the front and then from the behind."
(Re Preston) "He is coming on. It was a struggle for him early on. He was trying to learn two positions, and that is very difficult for a freshman. We have so many offense and defensive sets. We made up our minds to only play him at the two guard spot. He was ready to play a few days ago but got sick. He is a good basketball player. He is one of the few guys that can make the mid-range shot. He is very good at the mid-range spot."
(Re: margin) "Yes, (I am surprised ) at the margin win but we can use it with this Saturday-Monday type situation it is good for us to play a lot of people."
(Re Earl's hustle) "I talk to Earl almost 32 times a week. What Earl just needs to do is ... he is not going to remember everything and he will make some mental mistakes ... he just needs to be an athlete and that is what I am trying to drill into our guys. Regardless if you make mental mistakes if you hustle and give extraordinary effort you are always going to look good. And he is a tremendous athlete. Even when he makes a mistake in zone defense and in the press it doesn't matter. That is what we need to get him to do - just run, jump, play and pass and have some fun."
(Re: Short turnaround before Marquette") Look there is no easy way around the schedule no matter what happens. I said three weeks ago, everybody is going to beat up on each other. Georgetown, they have been the lucky team in the conference. Down one at Cincinnati and they make two free throws. Make a buzzer beater against UConn and Syracuse with a seven-footer. They are the lucky team. The rest of us are beating up on each other. That is, unfortunately, the difficulty of this league. Fortunately for the fans it is great and for the players with the competitiveness."
"Marquette has not lost at home and they got a road victory today and they are a terrific team. So we just gotta get ready. Marquette, and Georgetown twice, at Pitt and Providence, unless we pull out and go to another league it is Going to be tough every year."
(Learning from last game at Marquette) "It is a new game. Teams play well at home in this conference. We play well at home. They are going to play well. They are really good basketball team and they have a lot of weapons, great quickness, blinding quickness and very active with their hands. And the other game was a long time ago every game is different. Different players step up in different ways but we are healthy now. We know we are going to a very difficult situation. Tonight we had a breather but you wouldn't have thought that the way things have been happening in the BIG EAST."
(Confidence as health returns) "Our schedule is much tougher than last year. But we are hoping that this will be the same situation. We got healthy in February and healthy in the end of January. None of our losses are bad losses and we have had some decisive road victories against UNLV and UK. And we have some really good home victories. Dayton is a good basketball team and Cincinnati is certainly playing good basketball. Teams that we have lost to like to BYU and so on....we weren't healthy. But you give credit to them and young players have gotten experience. We haven't had any bad losses and we have been playing good basketball and now we get healthy. So you hope you keep playing well and we knew our schedule would be tough because we made it that way. We hope down the stretch that competitive schedule has made us a good basketball team."
Rutgers Head Coach Fred Hill
"I don't think they ever put their heads down, I think its depleting when you get a wide open shot and you don't make it you go down and get a defensive stop and then you give up an offensive rebound. I think there are some things that are obviously tougher to come back from, but I don't sense they put their heads down. They never quit. If they quit this could have been 100 to 25. We just kept coming at it and kept executing, which is the hardest thing in the world to do when things are not going your way. I think they kept coming after it and Louisville tried to make it a 100 to 25 game."
"It's over and Rick very graciously, got his people in. Just looking at the stats and the type of team that they have, it's not one person, it's everybody, and that's what makes a great basketball team and also very dangerous team. You got 11 from Terrence Williams, 12 for Clark, 6 for Padgett, 10 for Sosa 9, for Jerry Smith, 10 for Knowles, 12 for Derrick Character, 6 for McGee. No one went out there and got 25 and say that that guy killed you, that's what great teams do. Great teams can share the basketball and when you have that many weapons it's very difficult to try to console them. They didn't shoot well against us at Rutgers when we went zone, tonight they knocked it out. We tried to go man to man they have some guys that can hurt you down in the post with Padgett and Character. You try to throw a little junk at them and that was effective for a while but we didn't rebound out of it. So no matter what we went to they had an answer for it and they did it with every single guy."
(From emotional Seton Hall loss) "I don't think that had anything to do with it. This is the Big East and going on the road is tough. You never want to throw a stinker in when you're out on the road, but that's what happened. Again, our shooting woes are well documented. Because we won a couple of games we shot the ball well, we didn't turn into a team that's going to shot 50 percent every single night on the road and for that matter at home as well. We have to continue to play defense, continue to get better and continue to do all the little things that we said we were going through to build the process. We had two great wins. We had a great OT game against Seton Hall."
"There is a reason Louisville was picked to win the Big East conference. They are starting to play great basketball. They are healthy and today we saw the reason why they are the co-favorites to win this league with Georgetown."
