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Louisville-Marquette Postgame Quotes
January 15, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 15, 2011
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Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening Statement)
"Well, I think if you live long enough, you see it all. This is one of the top five comebacks for us in a long time. It was a team that outplayed us 34 minutes of the ball game. Stephan Van Treese and Chris Smith, during timeouts, could not breathe, had no air left. I said, `What do you think they feel like?' You have to understand, we're a pressing team, and lesson learned. We did all the good things and we rebounded. TJ [Terrence Jennings] gave us a big lift coming down the stretch, making his free throws, rebounding, and that's a great spark for him to understand what rebounding can do. I'm really, really proud of the guys. I'm shaking still. That went by so quick; all of a sudden we won the game. It reminds me of the Tennessee game, I forget the years, a long time ago. You suddenly turned around and you won the game. We executed well defensively, did a lot of smart things down the stretch. Bullet [Elisha Justice] made a lot of smart plays for us."
(On his thoughts as the team was down 18)
"We're just a very inexperienced team, and we really play hard. But for instance - they're going to beat you off the bounce, so you're at center, and here's the end line. All you have to do is step on the line, very simple thing. What do we do? We try to block the shot and foul. It's simple things, little things we can correct that hurt us. Now because they drive a lot, we fouled a lot. We couldn't even practice the last couple days because I was afraid to get hurt. Preston [Knowles] looked at me today like he wasn't going to play. We had to have a walk today because in practice yesterday, Gorgui [Dieng] acted like he broke his ankle in 10 pieces. He screamed and I had to cut practice short at 45 minutes. Preston didn't practice and during the walk this morning, Preston said, `Am I going to do this?' And I said `Do you think you're not playing? You're not coming out today so you if you're back's bothering you, you better get over it.'"
(On the lineup in the last five minutes)
"What we were trying to do was to get Kyle [Kuric] to pop back, because they were going to go over to Preston [Knowles]. Kyle had the intelligence, when they both went after [Preston], to go backdoor to the basket. The play was for Kyle to go back to Preston, so Preston took it to the double team, and found him. We saw the opening, we knew the roll guy was going to be open. But it was TJ's [Terrence Jennings] play down the stretch that gave us a big lift, and that guy's been really struggling. So this is a very positive step for him to get that type of reward."
(On Elisha Justice)
"I wish our people would understand - guys are going to have bad nights. Encourage them, and they'll play better. Discourage them, and they'll play worse. Understand that if you cheer them and get excited, they're going play harder. There's no one who wants to win more than Peyton Siva, so don't get down, get up. Cheer him on. But it wasn't his night. We had to go with Bullet [Elisha Justice], and he did an excellent job. I told him when he went back into the game, `Son, if you're going to play scared, go right back to the end of the seat. If you're going to try to go by people and make things happen, go in the game.' He shook his head, and I said `Do you got me?' And he did it."
(On the game as a teaching tool)
"Forget about teaching tool, we needed this victory. We had to get this. This was for fourth place [in the BIG EAST], and we play every game like it's the last game on earth. And so do they [Marquette]. They're a terrific team, a mirror image of Villanova. You can't separate those too, just at birth."
(On the confidence in the huddles)
"At the timeout, I said guys, I know you're exhausted, but they're exhausted. We have got to make the steals without fouling. If you foul, they're going to win the game. You have got to have great pursuit without fouling. You have to come out of your traps, you have to deny. Then we were going to foul [Junior] Cadougan or [Jae] Crowder in that situation. Preston [Knowles] made an unbelievable shot."
(On how/when he came up with the last play)
"Well, it's our box. We practice this a lot. We go into a pick and roll situation. We wanted to pop Kyle [Kuric] back and then Preston [Knowles] took it on. Kyle saw he didn't come back, so he rolled to the basket. [I knew] when I called the timeout."
(On Stephan Van Treese)
"I think he's struggling guarding off the bounce, though. He got beat all night off the bounce, and that hurt us. But I think he gives you 100 percent, he's terrific at it. I've never had any qualms about this basketball team. They just are immature, and when they get down, like the other night against Villanova, they did the opposite. They start taking quick shots, and they lose by 14. Six or seven, with a pressing team, is not a gigantic lead. Stay with it. The Villanova game helped us tonight understand such a gigantic lead. You don't see comebacks - what were we down there the final stretch? Eighteen. You don't see that too often."
(On BIG EAST wins being hard to come by)
"You have to go back to what I keep repeating, is that we're trying to win two out of three in each set. Mission accomplished in set number one. So far, now we have to win one of our next two. If you get a sweep, you can afford to lose two out of three, so mission accomplished. But this was a team that outplayed us tonight, but we won the game."
(On Chris Smith)
"He does a lot of good things. This is a team where everybody gives you everything, and again, they're going to make a lot of mistakes. I've never had to teach this much of the fundamentals of the game while the game was going on, in my life. I'm not talking about sophisticated, I'm talking about little things - on your switches, how to switch out. We work really hard on not going for ball fakes against these guys. We kept fouling Corey Fisher [of Villanova], so we kept working on really staying in our stance. But they beat us off the bounce and got to the rim. With Gorgui [Dieng], we want to front the post, but Gorgui kept playing behind the post. But as I said, his ankle could have been bothering him because he broke it in ten places yesterday."
(On early fouls on big guys)
"You get beat on the dribble, and you don't rotate, then you foul. Fifty percent of the time we step on the line, you have no place to go and you don't foul. If you play to block their shot and you open your shoulders and you try to block it, you foul. To be honest with you, with the exception of about 30 plays, I thought they were all fouls. No, with the exception of one or two they were fouls."
(On defense in the last five minutes)
"We just pressed intelligently without fouling, made our right rotations. We came up with the rebound. You can get teams to shoot quick, the problem we were having was we weren't coming up with the rebound, even on free throws. Tonight, we got a big lift by getting the rebounds. TJ [Terrence Jennings] down the stretch did a great job offensively as well as defensively, and he made his free throws. It was a big key obviously. You can't win the game unless you make your free throws."
(On the exposure of a national TV game)
"Well, probably most of the people turned off the TV, and they all will say they watched it. But it's a great comeback, and I'm proud. They're an extremely well-built team, so it was not easy to come back against Marquette. This is a team that took Duke to the wire, took Vandy to the wire, an excellent basketball team. They're very good off the bounce. It's not easy to do what we did, as a matter of fact, outside of maybe one game in my life, it's the most difficult thing we've had to do."
(On fouling Junior Cadougan near the end)
"I thought about it, and I said, who can we foul? They said [Junior] Cadougan. I thought. I said okay, I'm not going to live with it, we're going to foul. Everybody deny hard, let him catch the ball, let's foul. We gambled; it worked. Sometimes you lose on the gamble, but I didn't want to sit back. I wanted to be the aggressor, we're at home."
Marquette Head Coach Buzz Williams
(Opening Statement)
"I thought that we played great for most of the game. I thought we played well in the first half. They had eight points in transition, and that's what they are best at. They are really good at attacking the paint. I thought we played the first 12 minutes of the second half really well. We did not finish the game with poise, did not play with the same sort of mentality that we had played with up until that point. That is my fault more than it is anybody else's. I didn't manage the game at the end, and they (Louisville) did an unbelievable job of making shots, making hard shots. Their pressure bothered us towards the end more than it did throughout the game."
(On the play of Dwight Buycks down the stretch)
"I'm not sure what he was thinking, again that is my fault more so than it is his. I thought that he broke their pressure and I was about to call a timeout but didn't because we broke the pressure and I thought he was going to dribble it out and he didn't, but that's ok. And they have to foul. Our press offense is the same regardless of the type of press that they are running, and of course they change it up relative to whether it is a make or a miss, relative to whether they score, relative to the time they score for that matter. So I thought we did a good job of breaking the pressure and I'm not sure what he was thinking."
(On Kyle Kuric's game-winning layup)
"We are supposed to block that. Our ball screen coverage is our colors. Late in the game or depending on matchups we just switch it. Jae (Crowder) and Jimmy (Butler) were supposed to switch but somehow it was miscommunicated which is how 14 (Kyle Kuric) got behind us. It should have been a switch and one of them switched and one of them didn't and I don't remember which one it was, but it was supposed to be a block, switch it."
(On the team's attitude down the stretch)
"We wanted to play with intelligence, but we still have to play with the mentality that we can still get it to the paint and still get the ball reverse side, topside. I thought too often we took it late into the shot clock and didn't get a good look. Sometimes we didn't even get a paint touch."
(On the team's mood)
"Its hard anytime you go on the road and lose, it's hard - particularly when you are ahead or are in a position to win. But like every other coach in our league says, I wish we could feel sorry for ourselves and cry about it, but we play DePaul on Tuesday. So we have to hope for safe travel home and start again tomorrow to prepare for DePaul. They are disappointed, they are good kids and they are good players. They felt like we should have won, but we didn't. So we have to learn from that and keep going."
(On the close loss)
"Normally, the close games are close from start to finish. They are not several possession games that turn into one or two possession games. That is why I said that our experience in all of the close games is beneficial in a lot of ways. But we have never had a game that we were ahead by the margin that we were and then lose."
(On what changed in the last five minutes)
"I don't think that our mentality was what it was that led us up to that point. We didn't get the ball reversed as I said. We didn't get paint touches, we didn't get quality looks. And they were scoring quickly so the time of possession over the last five minutes was definitely in our favor, but when we had the ball within that time of possession, we didn't have the right mentality."
(On the atmosphere of the KFC Yum! Center)
"Man, this is a great place. Maybe the best place I have ever been to. The facility, the set up... I wish you guys had a table here so I could sit down, I'm tired. That's the only thing I could recommend. Another thing is in the coaches' locker room, they have all fancy fixtures but they don't have any paper towels in the dispenser- but that may be on purpose. I thought the crowd was great. We definitely gave them ammunition over the last five minutes to even be better."
(On the positives to come away with the game)
"I thought in a lot of ways, other than the last five minutes you could argue that this was the best we have played. I think our guys played with unbelievable energy, we had great focus, played the scouting report. And then over the last five minutes you could argue, in league play for sure, that is was the worst we have played."
(On taking away transition from Louisville)
"It has to be. Those three guards are as good as any three guards in our league. Those three guards are their leading scorers. Their possession duration is 10.3 seconds, so you have to stop them in transition. If you don't, it is going to be a quick down screen for either (Chris Smith) or (Preston Knowles) looking to shoot, and if they don't have a shot, it is going to be a quick ball screen. Once the ball screen takes place, if they don't have a shot, you probably need to guard 4-5 seconds and then they are going to shoot."
(On Preston Knowles' play down the stretch)
"He is a good player. I think he is one of the better guards in our league. He made big shot after big shot."
