Louisville vs. Albany Postgame Quotes

Louisville Head Coach David Padgett

(Opening statement) "I told Will Brown, their coach, right after the game that is a heck of a basketball team, extremely physical. Obviously, there's some very good teams in the ACC and some other good teams that we've played and will play, but from a physicality standpoint, I don't know if we'll see a much more physical team than that. We knew it coming in to the game. We tried to prepare for it, the amount of times we harped on the physicality and the rebounding over the last 48 hours or 72 hours. Nonetheless, you can't simulate it until you play against it. That's a heck of a basketball team. I don't know much about their league, but I'd be surprised if they don't win it this year. But, most importantly, we got the win. Like I told the guys, it's always better to learn in a win than a loss. We battled back. We were down three there with the under-four media timeout, it could have gone the other way. Our guys were a little down in the timeout, and I said, 'Look, there's four minutes left, we've just got to get some stops,' and we did. We had some crucial plays when we needed to. We'll take the win most importantly, but we've got to learn from what we're not doing well, and we've got to correct it. So, we'll get back to practice tomorrow and get ready for Saturday."

(On Ray Spalding's performance) "He was in foul trouble. I've had too many games like that when I was a player where you're in foul trouble and you just can't into the rhythm of the game. He made some crucial plays down the stretch there, got that deflection obviously, which was huge, that big basket, I think that was our only made post move tonight. It was a good team win, some guys did some resilient things. Dwayne Sutton came in and gave us a big boost, obviously, without even having scored, nine rebounds was crucial. We're happy with it and we'll move on.

(On the status of Quentin Snider) "I'm not sure to be honest. I know he wanted to be back out there, but I asked him, I said, 'Are you ok?' Of course he was going to say yes, but I could just tell he wasn't moving very well. But I'm not even sure what he hurt. I'll find out here shortly."

(On Louisville's field goal drought in the second half) "We missed some open shots. Anas had a couple around the rim that he just couldn't make. I don't know, sometimes that's just going to be how it is. There's going to be runs where the other team goes 1/13, we go 1/13, but if we go 1/13 we've got to try to get stops. Number 24 for them, (Joe) Cremo, who was obviously their leading scorer, he made some big tough shots. The one on Deng on the baseline, 8-10 foot runner, that's a tough shot. We've just got to look at the film, see what we did well, what we could have done better and just go from there."

(On if Albany's physicality bothering Louisville is a concern with ACC play approaching) "No, giving up 21 offensive rebounds is what concerns me more. Conversely, you get them to miss shots. The problem is we just didn't get the misses. I told the guys in one of the timeouts, it seemed like every 50/50 ball they were getting, they were getting to it quicker. They had 17 more shot attempts than us, so to be able to overcome a pretty big discrepancy like that, we'll take the win. We've got to learn from it. We've just got to continue to harp on defensive rebounding because it's been our biggest weakness since the first day of practice. We've just got to continue to do it. We're just going to have to be a great team rebounding team, for lack of a better term."

(On the guards rebounding) "Yeah, I know. It's everybody honestly. We can't just rely on Ray Spalding or Anas Mahmoud or those two guys to get all the rebounds. It's got to come from everybody because the way we play defense we force a lot of teams to take long shots, and long shots means long rebounds. It's just got to be everybody. It's got to be a mindset of the five guys that are on the court saying I'm going to go get the ball. Dwayne Sutton does a good job of having that mindset. VJ [King] was better tonight, but it's just got to be everybody. We've got to get it from every guy on the floor at all times."

(On Ryan McMahon's shooting and confidence) "I never worry about Ryan. He can miss 10 in a row, which I don't think he'll ever do, but he's always going to have confidence to shoot the next one. He understands how to get open, and when he's open he's got all the confidence in the world to keep shooting the ball. That one, obviously, he hit to increase our lead to four, I believe, was huge. As long as we take good shots, I'm totally fine with it no matter who it is."

(On team losing the lead late and coming back to win) "You know you're going to learn lessons. Obviously, you're up four and we give up a three, I believe. We made a couple mistakes defensively, where we left a guy open, but at the end of the day the most important thing is us getting the win. I'll wake up tomorrow morning feeling a lot better about being 9-2 than I would have if we were 8-3 so that's the most important thing at the end of the day."

(On Albany having 21 offensive rebounds and only 13 second chance points) "You know a couple times Anas would block the shot, and it was kind of like what happened against Memphis, the guy who shot it, it would literally just come right back to him and he'd block it again and it would come right back to him. We got lucky a little bit in the first half when they would get the offensive rebound, and they just miss. I don't know what their conversion rate was on their offensive rebounds, but we've just got to continue to work on it. I told the guys, there's no magical drill or anything like that that we can do. It's just the mindset of the guys to go pursue the ball and be aggressive about doing it."

(On Snider's shooting and leadership) "Well his leadership has always been there. He leads by example. He's probably the most well-respected guy on the team from the younger players. It's just guys, I don't want to call it a slump that he was in to start the season, he just wasn't making shots. There wasn't a reason why or why not, he just wasn't making shots. Like I kept telling you guys after all the games I said look it's only going to take one game to get him going. I think maybe it was the Bryant game or whatever game it was and he made three or four or whatever it was, and all the sudden you're completely different. You're confident. You're not thinking about missing, you're surprised when you don't make it, so it's just a confidence thing."

Albany Head Coach Will Brown

(Opening statement) "I'm just proud of my guys. We knew this was going to be a tremendous challenge. Louisville has tremendous size, length, athleticism… second in the nation in blocked shots. I thought our guys executed the game plan to a tee. Was not expecting (Ryan) McMahon to play that much, so you have to give him credit. He played really well, hit some big shot, but I'm proud of my guys. We beat them up on the glass, thought we were physical with them, and we put ourselves in a position to win down the stretch against a talented team and that's what you want to do during these types of games. I thought the call that was reversed hurt us, and I thought that last three by McMahon when (Joe) Cremo was chasing him, he just slipped and fell down and McMahon knocked it down. You have to give credit to McMahon for making a big shot in crunch time. I'm nothing, but proud of our efforts and I thought we put ourselves in a position to win, we just didn't finish the job."

(You get 21 offensive rebounds, which continues your dominance off the glass this season. You only get 13 second chance points off that. Is that due to Louisville's length, or was there another factor in that?) "I think when our guys were getting those offensive rebounds, they felt like they were in a forest. Just looking up at all those trees, there wasn't any place to shoot the ball. Tremendous length, and I joked (V.J.) King starts for them at the off guard and he's bigger than my center. Their length was unbelievable, and we told our guys you've got to finish strong, or you got one shot, fake and finish, otherwise, kick it out. Again, it's just the makeup of Louisville's team. We don't see that very often and we cannot simulate that in our prep for this game. If we got 21 offensive rebounds against a team in our league, we'd probably score an awful lot of baskets, but again, you credit Louisville for the length and their athleticism and the timing is impressive. They really don't foul on their blocked shots and that's hard. A lot of kids swing wildly and Louisville does a good job at making sure they don't foul."

(With a game like this to come up this short, is it more frustrating especially considering this could have been a resume building win for you guys?) "If you walk in our locker room right now you would have thought we lost the national championship. Our guys were upset. They thought they played well enough to win. They thought that they outcompeted Louisville and I just tried to stress to them all of the positives. The only negative, I guess, is we lost the game and that's all that really matters. But, I thought we did a lot of good things. It does sting. Because, like you said, you don't get those opportunities too often. Last year we opened up the season winning at Penn State. This year we missed an opportunity last week at Memphis. In the game, that I thought – in the final five or six minutes we were tied – we didn't play very well. Then we had another opportunity tonight that our guys were excited about in a game where we had very little room for error because of their size and athleticism on both ends. Yeah, so it's going to hurt. This type of loss, with the holidays coming up, these guys will have a couple of days to digest it and then we get right back to work."

University of Louisville Athletics

Players Mentioned

Anas Mahmoud

Ryan McMahon

Quentin Snider

Ray Spalding

Dwayne Sutton

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