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Louisville-West Virginia Postgame Quotes
January 26, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 26, 2011
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Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening Statement)
"Well this was a very hard-fought game. One thing I try to get through to our players, when they don't shoot well, they let it affect their rebounding and other parts of the game. Basically, when you play West Virginia or you play Pittsburgh, the chances of you shooting well are not great. You've got to play defense and rebound the basketball. In the second half, we rebounded great. We played tremendous defense. I said it's just like the tournament. There's always one night where you don't shoot well. Good defensive teams go on to the next round. The last two games we let our offense dictate how we played our defense. In the second half we did a much better job. I'm proud of our character coming back. It's not easy to come back when you get down to West Virginia by that many points."
(On the last play)
"We were going to set a screen for Preston [Knowles] coming off, and George [Goode] forgot to set the screen. The second option, if he wasn't open, was throw it back to Peyton [Siva] and set the pick and roll on Peyton. Peyton made a great play, despite the fans wanting Russ Smith at the end of the game."
(On adjustments against Joe Mazzulla in the second half)
"We made adjustments on everything. What was happening is we were giving him his left hand and we were going for the ball fake. We were really concentrating on stopping other people. Not that we don't have respect for Mazzulla. That's probably his highest point total he's scored in a half in his career and that's a tribute to his play. But we knew where he was in the second half.
(On Russ Smith)
"He gave us a great spark. That's going to lift him up a little bit. We can only run one of two things with him in a game and that's a pick and roll. You see he has no fear at all - that's both a blessing and a negative. His intention was to score 30 points when he came in. You would think in this pressure-packed game, that a player wouldn't think that - but not Russ.
(On getting Terrence Jennings in the comeback)
"He got every rebound down the stretch - especially with Gorgui (Dieng) not rebounding the basketball. He doesn't know old movies, so he never saw the Invisible Man, he doesn't know what it's like to come in and take that character out and really rebound the basketball down the stretch was good for us.
(On being tied for second in the BIG EAST)
"We should be tied for first. It's going to be short-lived, we all know that. But we got one out of three and we need to get one more now, to get the second of the three.
I really mean this, there are a lot of great coaches in this game and Bob Huggins is a part of the great coaches. Very few coaches--and don't take this the wrong way about the talent, because they have good talent even with the guys remaining. But take West Virginia out of the equation and Bob Huggins can coach seven guys named Harry and be competitive. That's not this team, this team is good. But you can give him anybody and he can coach and they're always going to be in the game. We knew that, I've got great respect for him. I've known him in 35 years of coaching. He's a great coach. Even though they're undermanned, they played terrific.
We've got another concussion on our hands with Gorgui."
(On Peyton's last shot)
"I told him, `you have to penetrate and I told him to kick it,' I told him `we're going to score, but get back. There's going to be time left on the clock.' We did and there was a big play with (John) Flowers getting the ball back. We've had some great comebacks and these kids without question are the cardiac kids. They've just got great heart, great character. It's fun to coach them, with that being said, we've got to understand what defense is all about and our offense is affecting us too much. In the second half, we just forgot about offense. I said if you forget about offense and you just move and screen and cut, what's going to happen is, you're going to score. If you think about your shot not going in, you'll play bad defense and you'll be in a bad mood to play defense. So they did a great job and I think they shot 18 per cent in the second half."
(On the BIG EAST)
"We didn't like losing. But Providence is a really good basketball team. They played Syracuse, had Syracuse to the wire. They played St. John's to the wire. They had Pitt up four , so we knew they were a very good basketball team. We played a very good first half and then you see Seton Hall with what they did, going up to Syracuse. And tonight you saw Providence kill Villanova. It's my old school, I tried to give them as much confidence as possible to help them and I did a good job."
(On atmosphere in the second half)
"It's going to be a street fight. We did a very good job of fronting the post. We did a very good job of pressuring the basketball. Obviously we couldn't press effectively in the first half, because we weren't shooting a decent percentage. But we made some good turnovers. Russ (Smith) has very quick defensive hands. If we can just get him to know what he's doing out there, he can be a very effective defensive player because he's got the quickest hands on the team."
(On Terrence Jennings' missed shot)
"I feel bad for TJ, he was wide open off a pick and roll. He thought somebody was coming up, so he shot it up a little bit instead of dunking. He was trying to get it off before the rotation, but he was wide open."
(If this type of comeback win will help motivate the team if they get down in the tournament)
"We're both 4-2, we're both fighting. We don't know how this season's going to end. When I was watching tv - the Florida game last night- Seton Hall was up 12 at half and I texted Ralph (Willard) and said "keep praying.' And then when they were up 20, I said they'd been answered. So many unusual things happen. Yes, our team can come back. We're a pressing, running team. We do have tremendous character. But if you go on the road now, we'll kill our set if we don't get one of the next two. We've just got to pay attention to that. We've played good basketball on the road, we just haven't put together two good halves. We played a terrific half against Villanova, a terrific first half against Providence with Preston (Knowles) in foul trouble. We haven't played as well in the second half. We've got a big battle against Connecticut. And then we've got a big battle against Georgetown."
(On if West Virginia was fatigued in the second half)
"I don't know. I think it does fatigue the guards that have to bring it up all the time against pressure. I know when we practice, our guards are exhausted when they've got to go against the pressure. We were running and jumping and the one thing you've got to get out of it - the one thing you don't want to do is give up a layup. We're doing a good job there. In the second half, we got some steals out of it.
They were without some of their best basketball players, it's an adjustment in crunch time. They did a great job underneath out of bounds plays stopping us. We did a very poor job of screening, we'll work very hard on that tomorrow."
West Virginia Head Coach Bob Huggins
(Regarding the last play of the game)
We were supposed to push him left and he made a hard shot.
(Difference between halves)
We didn't rebound the ball as well. They rebounded the ball better and got a lot of second shots. They stopped our penetration a little better than they did in the first half. We didn't have any shots. We missed two layups. We missed all kinds of shots around the rim. It is not like we didn't have shots.
(On any changes in second half)
We just didn't make a shot. When you don't make a shot and you have my two returning starters between them, going 4-for-21. We didn't make a shot. When you don't make a shot, it makes things tighter.
(On fatigue factor for Bryant's free throws)
No, he wasn't tired. You have to get it over the rim. A hundred percent of the shots that don't go over the shots don't go in. It is kind of like golf - a hundred percent of the putts that don't get to the hole, don't go in.
(On what Louisville did to get Mazzulla out of game)
We didn't make any shots. So it made it tighter for him. The zone kept getting tighter. We had them spread out in the first half. But I thought we were going to make a shot and so did they and I did too. They tricked me and Rick.
(On adjustments)
I thought we came out early and played like we were supposed to lose. And that is why I called the early timeout. We weren't very assertive and I thought we got pretty assertive. We got a layup off the press and that got us going a little bit. Joe made a couple of shots. That is what I told him yesterday that he is our secret weapon. He came into the game shooting .07 from the field and they probably thought he wasn't going to make one. He has really worked hard at shooting the ball. We worked on his mechanics a little bit again. We actually changed it back to the way it was to when he was making shots. So I thought he has as good of a shot of making one as the others.
(On the offense working well)
Eighteen points is pretty much part of it. But in the second half, they jammed it in and we couldn't get it at the rim. He had a couple of shots in the second half that just laid on the rim and didn't go in. But he has to make some shots. No one in this league is going to let you shoot layups the whole game, except maybe us.
