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Louisville-Pittsburgh Postgame Quotes
February 26, 2012 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 26, 2012
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Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening statement)
“We keep getting caught in these slow paced, half-court games and it's our own fault because we're not pushing the pace enough. The main thing I told our guys was that they are not going to get open looks without spreading the floor and beating teams down the court. I was kidding with Gorgui (Dieng) and I said 'Look Gorgui, you came over here to be a professional basketball player. I hope they have a pro league in Senegal because you're not going to make the pros if you play like that son. You had no offensive rebounds and shot only 35 percent.' That was the first game he was out of it. I don't know why. He may be a little tired. He's been playing great basketball but today he was totally out of it. It could be because since Chane (Behanan) and Gorgui had such great games at Pitt, they decided to take those two guys away. So the one thing we're going to work on this week is to get our guys playing a faster pace. There will be more opportunities and we'll look better offensively if we can create that.”
(On speeding up the tempo against a slowdown team like South Florida)
“It'll be difficult but you have to attempt it. Five guys have got to attempt to run and get into it quicker so that they're not as alert to what they should do defensively. Remember at the beginning of the year we talked about the three second limit to get it past half-court. We got away from that a little bit.”
(On Russ Smith scoring 11 straight for Louisville)
“That's why I started him. If we are going to play that way we need somebody other than Peyton (Siva) to take it off the bounce. It's just so difficult with him. I've never known what a nervous breakdown is but coaching him I feel like I almost have one daily. He was going out of his mind. I have no idea what he does out there when he's on the court. We were running some side pick and rolls for him and the chances of him passing on a side pick and roll are not good. He's the one guy that's fearless. Let's face it; he's won about four or five games for us this year. I live with it. He's got to stop reaching because he could have given up a three there. We didn't need a steal; we needed to stop the three. I'm just trying to get him to concentrate on defense, but offensively I just let him have his way.”
(On Pitt taking a two while being down three with 13 seconds left)
“We were guarding the three point line with our life so the guy had a layup. I told Russ to stay on the side of him and we're going to switch out. We're not going to give them a three. Billy Rafferty asked me if I would foul in that situation. Because we were going small and one of our weaknesses is that we're not a great free-throw block out team. I'm afraid to do that. I've only done it once in my career. I would rather guard the line with our life than do that. I've done that one time in my life with a good block out team and lost the game. If I had a good block out team I would certainly consider it. We were doing such a great job on Ashton Gibbs and Tray Woodall that I felt comfortable guarding him.”
(On the teams frequent scoring droughts)
“I think we're playing too much half-court basketball. Here's what happens. Every single thing that we run is put on tape and we put theirs on tape. So everybody knows every single thing you're going to run if you walk up the court and get into it. That gives everyone time to choreograph their defense. If you sprint the ball up the floor, even if you don't get a fast break, it's difficult to get them to understand what you're running because we're moving and that's what we have to get back to. We'll start working on that tomorrow. You're right, if you play that way they're going to have droughts and we're going to have droughts.”
(On why there are so many low scoring games)
“It's that time of year in conference play. We've got to run more. It's as simple as that. In the first half we shot a low percentage and when that happens more offensive rebounds are available. When you look at it Gorgui had none, Kyle (Kuric) had none, and Chane only had one. So we weren't doing the job on the glass either.
(On trying to get the team to play at a faster pace)
“We have to press more. That won the game for us tonight. I keep disappointing myself by doing stupid things like playing Kevin Ware when he didn't know any plays and tonight playing Wayne Blackshear. Fred (Hina) came up to me before the game and said he's ready to play. But he's not ready to play because he doesn't know the plays and he hasn't practiced. I keep trying to get him game experience and I'm putting him in a bad situation because he doesn't look good. He doesn't know what he's doing out there. I keep disappointing myself but we've got to get him to practice so he knows what he's doing.”
(On Kyle Kuric's 3-pointer with just under four minutes left to play)
“The one thing that Kyle does that Chris (Smith) has to learn to do is when Peyton is going, he's moving and Chris stands still. We kept trying to run plays for him and he's very good at moving without the basketball. He's a big shot maker with the game on the line. “
(On whether it was important for Kyle Kuric to get his confidence back right away after an 0 for 11 performance at Cincinnati)
“I really don't think so. I think if he wasn't a four-year vet that's made a lot of big shots - I think he's smart enough to know whether you're Michael Jordan or you're good on another spectrum, you're going to have a night where you don't make shots. Everybody has one of those nights. He's very fortunate he hasn't had more of those nights. I don't think he thought about it at all. We didn't make any big deal of it at all.”
(On the assist to turnover ratio)
“We turned it over too much in the first half - eleven in the first half and three in the second half. So when you look at 19 to 14, that's good. Only nine assists, is because we had 11 fast breaks in the game. Our goal is 22-25 fast breaks per game. Maybe all these half-court games will help us because of that one game in the tournament that you've got to play that way. We've played this so much this year. But we've got to get away from it, we really do. The only way to do that is pressing. I haven't been pressing. I feel more confident now in Kevin Ware and Russ (Smith), they come in, they pressure. As soon as we get Wayne, it will help us even more.”
(On if he's hoping for Peyton to pass when he's in the lane or for him to try and finish more often)
“I think it all depends on what the defense does. I think Peyton's got to go, if he sees the lane, he's got to make the shot. If the lane is covered, he's got to make the midrange shot. If they rotate, he's got to make the pass out. I think he's getting better at it, but he's still not where he needs to be.
“I think he's a point guard right now. I think sometimes he goes too fast and he can't stop and he travels. All of his travels are like skids, he can't stop.”
(On the defense on Ashton Gibbs)
“We've played good defense all year - not always good three-point defense. But we felt that we were going to stop Woodall and Gibbs. The last time we played, it was Woodall's first game back. We were going to stop those two guys tonight. JJ Moore has been playing better and taking good shots. This team is going through a tough season. It's been a difficult time for them. Sometimes it's unexplainable these types of things that happen to all of us throughout our careers. You get on a run and all of a sudden you get in a rut and you can't get out of the rut. It happens to all of us in basketball. I know they're going to go into the Big East tournament saying, 'okay we're this year's Connecticut. We're going to win this thing.”
(On Chris Smith's struggles)
“He never gets any open looks anymore because we're playing so slow. So they stay on him. He's not a Russ Smith, where he takes them off the bounce. If we play fast, he'll get seven to 10 open shots, but we're not, we're playing too slow so they just stay at home on him and he doesn't get good looks and when he comes off of screens, they jam him a little bit and he's not great off the bounce.”
(On free throw shooting)
“The guy I don't understand is Russ Smith. And I think it goes with his personality. He's so wound up that he has a tough time relaxing. On one play that we needed a score on, I said Russ you're going to come off the screen and we're going to get Kyle off the screen and try get him open and let's pass him the ball. He immediately never even thought about passing the ball. He just shot it and it went in. You want him to do that when he's open. I didn't think he could get open on the play. On defense and in that type of situation he's hyped up, but on the foul line he has to learn to relax. He's the one that surprises me. I think everybody else is fine. If I had to look at everybody else on the team, I'd say Chane Behanan and he made 4 out of 5 and Peyton made the good ones at the end, but Russ is the curious one - why he doesn't make more free throws.”
Pittsburgh Head Coach Jamie Dixon
(Opening Statement)
“We felt this was a game we should've won and it got away from us. We went through a lot of things, we were down, we were in foul trouble, we came back and had an opportunity in the end. I'm disappointed in the loss, I give them credit. We defended well, I was happy with our improvement this week and we saw it in practice. Today we saw it, I thought we defended really well in the half court, we outrebounded them by 13. It shows how hard we were playing and how hard we were battling. The turnovers are what really hurt us and also the transition baskets and foul trouble had a big effect on what we were able to do. It's disappointing for us because I really thought we had a good week, we were able to finally work on some things, especially the last two days. So it's disappointing to come up short.”
(On Tray Woodall's decision making in final seconds)
“I think it's a tough call but obviously we didn't win so it can be questioned at this point afterwards. When you lose I guess it has to be questioned. We had the time, we fouled pretty quickly and when you lose I guess it can be questioned.”
(On Ashton Gibbs' recent shooting slump)
“We've gone through this before this is just a short term thing. When he passes up shots and shot fakes, he puts it down and we tell him to take the open three. We want him to get more threes but this is something we've talked about often. It's just a couple he's passed up and he put down on the floor. It's something that we're going to continue to work on.”
(On Ashton Gibbs being to unselfish)
“I think he's passing up good shots or shots we want. It's not something we want to do but we have that with everybody. I talked to J.J. Moore about the same thing, he's a 40% three point shooter and I thought he passed up a couple of them that we need to take. The defense will recover and you can't pass up good shots.”
(On play selection following Chane Behanan's missed free throw)
“We ran a play and we have to get a better shot then what we got, but we didn't. We have to do a better job of that. We were in position, we're down one, we got the ball and hopefully we can make the play. We did a good job putting ourselves in that position, we had the ball where you want to be and we didn't get it done.”
(On play of J.J. Moore)
“He did a good job. He got seven rebounds, he's defending better. As I talked about, he's rebounding better; he's getting layups and getting to the foul line. He's improving, he's just a sophomore but he's improving. Working hard and continuing to improve.”
(On team's lack of scoring)
“You look at all the scores and they've been low. We out shot them, made more baskets then them, it was 21 to 17 in field goals made, you got to feel pretty good about that. You just have to get to the free throw line more. You look at the scores across the country and they get low as the year goes on and this is probably a game you expected to be like this as far as numbers.”
(On John Johnson's lack of minutes)
“Cameron (Wright) was playing well, he had a good week and he played pretty well today. So that was based off that, I probably could have got him in there a little more but Cameron played well and that's what we went with. We've got to do a better job of taking care of the ball and he's normally good with the ball. Maybe he should have played more.”
(On Dante Taylor and Malcolm Gilbert's defensive play)
“We wanted to get Malcolm in there and we started Dante, we wanted to play a little bit bigger but the foul trouble hurt us. We had 15 fouls in the first half and it changes things that you have to do. We had to play through that for most of the game.”
