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Louisville vs. Cal State Northridge
December 23, 2014 | Men's Basketball
Recap | Box Score | Notes | UL Photo Gallery 
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Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening Statement) "I'm feeling sick tonight. I didn't know if I was going to be able to coach tonight but I got through it. I'd rather not talk about this game but I will say this, David Levitch was unbelievable. He gave us a big lift in terms of what we were doing. He made the shots and that was nice but he knew what to run. The one thing we wanted to do was concentrate on not going to the rim and shooting the ball off the bounce. Last year we definitely lost the game against Kentucky because of offensive rebounding. They just pounded us at the end of the game on the glass and we lost a very close game. We didn't do a great job tonight but we're thrown all out of whack without Montrezl Harrell but we pulled out the two victories and now it's time to get back to work."
(On initial thoughts on Kentucky) "I think they are a great basketball team and one of the better defensive teams because of their length and size. I wanted to play Anas (Mahmoud) tonight to see what he could do and he didn't play until 12 minutes to go in the game. He should not have been playing. He had zero offensive rebounds. We didn't see the ball in transition and Kentucky will annihilate you if you do that."
(On what the biggest challenge Kentucky presents) "Rebounding."
(On the way UofL is playing right now going into the game) "You know, I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock into this right now. We have been thrown out of whack. Why? I don't know? I watched the film, why were we thrown out of whack like this, I don't know. We have to live with it. That's the rules of the game."
(On three-point shooting being a factor for Saturday's game) "I don't think you beat Kentucky with three-point shooting. Everyone thinks you beat Kentucky with three-point shooting. That is a factor. Any game you want to shoot the three. They win because they control the backboard and they are an awesome defensive team. We stayed toe-to-toe with them last year and at the end of the game they just kicked our butts on the glass. That was very discouraging today, the way we rebounded the ball. Wayne (Blackshear) didn't do it, he played great. I knew he would. But Anas (Mathiang), Wayne, and Chinanu (Onuaku) -- none of them rebounded the ball. Our guards cost us the game last year in rebounding, they stood out there and let them rebound four against three."
(On how facing the platoon system of Kentucky changes the defensive game plan) "No. They're just going to play 10 great players. But, they're a great team. We have a lot of respect for them. I'm very impressed with how humble they are - that they would dedicate themselves to being a team and not worry about minutes. They're just playing great basketball. That's a tribute to their coaching staff. That's a tribute to their players. There's no ego there, they're just playing basketball. And they're one of the better teams I've witnessed in quite some time, on the backboard as well as defensively. They're so long."
(On how he knew Wayne Blackshear would play great tonight) "I just said, `you're going to get the ball, you're going to do a lot of things tonight. This is over with you feeling sorry for yourself. You're going to go out tonight and you're going to kick ass."
Cal State Northridge Head Coach Reggie Theus
(Opening statement) "You see a lot of games like this and people are just wondering... can you survive? I thought when the energy levels were the same, we competed extremely well. We (had an) eight-point game with 16 minutes to go. I don't give this as an excuse, but when you only have seven guys, they make mistakes when they're tired and the effort level changes. Energy to energy and rest to rest, I thought that we battled them pretty hard and I'm really proud of the way our guys fought. If you look at it statistically, there's only one statistic that says the reason why we lost the game and that's three-pointers. They made 11, we made zero. You can't win a game like that.
"It was nice to see Coach (Pitino) I hadn't seen him in a while. I always thought about the day coming back to play against Coach. The first time I scheduled a game, I got the Sacramento Kings job, and this time I came in with half a team. Not exactly the way I wanted to come back, but he was very complimentary about the guys playing hard and that's all we can ask for."
(On Wayne Blackshear's six 3-pointers) "He's a little streaky, but he shot the ball well today. Good for him, because I think he's a very good player and I think that's the one area where if he's more consistent in that area, it's going to lengthen his career."
(Once you saw Wayne getting hot, did you make any changes?) "We were making a mistake on the other side of the floor. We had a situation defensively that wasn't happening on this side. They were swinging it, consequently end up 2-on-1 on the back side. I tried to correct it, but, what can I tell you? I changed the defenses. I played four different defenses today."
(On getting Louisville's lead down to eight then Louisville's late run in the second-half) "As things went, I had one timeout because I had to burn a bunch of timeouts. Then we had a loose ball, maybe once or maybe twice, and the players called a timeout. It just drives me crazy when players do that. I try to get my guys to understand where the arrow is so we don't burn a timeout, but they do it anyway. I only had one timeout so I really didn't want to use it. I just had our guys fight through it. I knew we were going to need it for rest at the end of the game. It was important for me to teach our guys to take different victories. I wanted to win the last minute and 24 seconds. It is important for us to leave here with the mindset that we can win when we get back home."
(On if Stephen Maxwell may have hurt his hand in the second half) "No, I think he sprained it. They said it wasn't broke and it was his right hand which he doesn't use anyway."
(On what improvements needed from non-conference games) "I would like to just try and get our guys back. We play Stephen F. Austin coming up, which will be a tough game and our deficit in our losses is about eight points right now without playing the high majors. I think if we can just make shots it would help because we don't have anyone hitting shots right now."
