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Louisville vs. Marshall
November 22, 2014 | Men's Basketball
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 1 
| Photo Gallery 2
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening Statement) "It was good to play without Montrezl [Harrell] to see if we could be in a situation where we didn't lose the lead. That was good. Our guards tonight didn't play like veterans because they were affected too much by their missed shots and they lost focus of what's most important - and that's winning the game. So, it was disappointing from an experience standpoint, but a very good victory for us. We knew this team would be difficult to defend because sometimes they play five out on the perimeter and it takes you out of what you do defensively. I thought Nanu [Chinanu Onuaku] and Mangok (Mathiang) were very focused on their jobs tonight, and they both did an excellent job."
(On playing without Montrezl Harrell during stretches) "I just thought they dug in and did smart things, and that's why I'm playing (David) Levitch. The student body thinks it's a joke, but I'm playing Levitch because he does smart things and helps us run our offense, and he understands defense. He always does smart things."
(On the team's biggest area for improvement) "I think that the most important thing is for us to understand what focus is all about. We lose focus based on missed shots and good teams don't do that. I thought tonight we missed a lot of layups and it affected our defense getting back. I think we got too jump-shot happy even though they were open shots, and Mangok and Nanu saved us a lot with offensive rebounds."
(On David Levitch's improvement from last year) "He really does a lot of smart things. He knows how to move the basketball on the offense. He knows how to spot up. He can go by people. Defensively, he's a much-improved basketball player."
(On Louisville's ability to create turnovers) "Yeah, we had to win the game off of defense tonight because we weren't clicking offensively. We had to wear them out physically and do the things that we have to do. We had a lot of steals. We had 41 deflections. We got after them. Our effort level defensively and getting after people was great."
(On Wayne Blackshear tonight) "He's playing really well. His shot was a little flat tonight. Sometimes, when you work that hard on defense, your shot becomes flat. Great defense, sometimes, and great effort can affect you on the foul line as well as with your shot. It affected him a little bit. The nice thing about Wayne is he really worked hard on his ball handling as much as anything, so he's making some great moves to the basket."
(On the playing ability of both Mangok Mathiang and Chinanu Onuaku) "I thought Mangok and Nanu were both terrific. They understood the game plan very well and that's why we didn't lose the lead. That's why we enhanced the lead. They understood it. They weren't interested in shooting jump shots. They knew who they were. They knew that rebounding was crucial and they did their job."
Marshall Head Coach Dan D'Antoni
"It was our first road trip. All these guys are new to it. I'm new to it. We're playing a legendary coach. He's an outstanding coach. It's an outstanding program. I thought we came in, we did pretty good for a while, but we let their pressure get us out of what we were doing. We have to have more discipline. They do a good job, but we have to have more discipline and I think at times towards the second half I was pretty happy we didn't let them just take off on us. And we started running a few of the things that we did the first three games and I thought we were fairly successful at it. All in all, like I said, we're a very young team. None of them have ever led a team at this level. We have a lot of work to do, but I think they're together and willing to do that. I think later on down the road, at the end of the year, I'd like to play them again."
(You cut the lead to 13 in the second half, are you happy with that performance?) "Not really...I think they shoot 38 percent and 13 percent from three. I'm not going to say we were all of it but we were getting after them. Not all of it was us some of it was them, but again I thought we gave them a pretty good effort. We kept them at percentages where we could win the game if we operated like we should. We're trying to build our team and our program up. This my first year here and I'm here for a reason. We have to build our program back, thought we did an okay job. It was a great experience, we'll learn from it and watch tape tomorrow and go over what I saw that we have to get better at and hopefully we'll do that."
(On Ryan Taylor's 18 rebounds) "Eighteen is good. There's nothing about basketball that's individual. I know writers like to write about things about a star player so you can write a story. Rebounding is a team thing. He might have gotten a rebound because the center blocked our guy out. Everything is a team game I don't know if we out rebounded them or not. At first they were really killing us for the first ten minutes of the game. I think after that we evened it out pretty good and played pretty decent on the boards. Again I'm a little disappointed we just didn't run our stuff very often and we didn't execute like we needed too. A little bit is our defense that was the first time we seen a zone played like that. Again once these guys season-up, we have a Serbian point guard that's never seen American basketball out there trying to play. We've got sophomore Ryan Taylor, he wasn't the leader of the team last year, he was probably the third guy. Everybody else... there's (Austin)Loop who is a sophomore... we're very young and inexperienced.
This is a tough atmosphere; it's a great basketball atmosphere. You got to give Louisville hands up, they do a great job of supporting the program. It's a tough environment for us to come into, but one I like. I like coming into venues like this. It was a long time ago when I played this is where I would want to come. I want to instill that in our players and I think when they start understanding there is no environment they can't enjoy, then we will be a better team."
