Postgame Quotes | Louisville vs. Clemson - University of Louisville Athletic

Louisville Head Coach Chris Mack

(Opening statement) "I would like to announce my retirement as a college basketball coach. It's been real, Louisville. First of all, very, very hard-fought battle. Clemson's got, I think, the second-best rated defense in our league. Their physicality, especially in the first half, knocked us back. I thought our defense was every bit as good. We made a point of trying to keep Elijah Thomas' touches in the paint down as best we could. He's as good of a big as there is in our league. You probably saw that in the last five, eight minutes. He does a great job of sealing and we didn't continue that trend all the way through, limiting his paint touches. It was a hard game to score. When you miss a shot against Clemson, they're not going to race it back up and try to attack, play that tennis match. I give our kids credit for being able to withstand that mental grind - we're going to play a couple other teams who are going to do that to us as well - and not let it diminish our defensive effort.

I know what you're going to ask about. I thought in the very beginning, what got us that lead was our ability to attack the pressure and result in some good things. We were able to get over the half court stripe and get into a set play, which resulted for a Jordan (Nwora) dunk and one, gave them more separation. I think the very next time they pressed us, we did exactly what we wanted to. We flashed a guy, the wing flew down the floor, and Ryan (McMahon) makes a great pass I think to Malik (Williams) and he dunks the ball. Down the stretch, again, we have to figure out ways to close games better. I told our team, mental errors and physical errors cannot be tolerated in winning time. It's the first time our guys have ever been in positions where they are closing games. What I mean by that, is they're on the floor, they're in the moment, they're closing the game. We had against Florida State and Duke, maybe two of the toughest locker rooms that I've been in during a regular season. I'm sure to a certain extent, those ghosts were probably in our guys' minds a little bit. We just have to be stronger with the ball, that's all I can tell you. We have to. It's one of those things where Dwayne (Sutton) hunches over the ball, I told him, 'You have to be able to pivot and move the ball so they can't just reach in and get an easy jump ball.' We'll get better because of it. I'll tell you this, I might have retired had we not blocked that shot at the very end. The guys have got to be able to stand up when we're breaking a press, not fall down like they're walking down through a wine cellar."

(On the team possibly not having a lot of energy) "I don't agree with that. They're a team that's really hard to extend with ball screen action, which we're a team that tries to get the ball in the paint. Our bigs were very ineffective on offense, so I think that we missed some shots and we tried to stretch them and spread them. They're a team that doesn't exert a lot of energy outside the ar, so it's hard to stretch Clemson. We were trying to do it in different ways, and we couldn't. Then you go 1-9, I think there were some decent looks. Again, they try to take the air out of the ball coming off it. You're going to play some games like that, but I thought if our energy level was bad, we would have been pourous on defense."

(About the effect the Duke loss had were the players "feeling sorry for themselves") "I don't know about the choice of words of feeling sorry for ourselves but when you invest a lot and you love your teammates and you want your team to win, yeah, it hurts a hell of a lot. But I don't think they felt sorry for ourselves. Maybe in the immediacy of the game but I thought we sort of wiped that out in the last couple of days and looked forward to a team that was just as desperate as Louisville."

(About playing with the urgency) I thought we did play with urgency. I think offensively we weren't very good but I thought our defensive effort, they shoot 38 percent, their three point percentage at the end of the game was 46 and they made two or three threes in the last two or three minutes. Their whole identity is to go inside. I thought, again, for the better part of the game our team was locked in defensively. Like I said the number two defensive team in the country. They played very slow. So it's going to be hard at times to look like a game that's sort of high flying and guys are moving around. Again, maybe that contributes to what you think is a lack of energy."

(About how they're carrying themselves trying to catch those passes and get out) "When I said posture, I was talking about the tie up. When I hold this water bottle like this and you come over and grab it and I don't move it, you're going to come over and grab it like this it would be tough for you."

(About Jordan Nwora's blocks) "The big one was the second one. We really worked on when we can't break a press to come out of nowhere and block shots."

(About Jordan Nwora's defensive improvement) "It's not even close. You know, part of it is just game experience. He's a very thoughtful kid. He loves his teammates. And when you're out there for an extended period of time where your teammates are leaning on you and you let them down, he's one that's going to feel accountable to those guys. I think he learned that over time. I think he's gotten fundamentally better on the defensive end. His technique is much better. His desire is much better and so we need him to be a good, if you have one guy that lets down or doesn't do what the other four are doing then you're not going to be a good defensive team."

(About late game breakdowns might be becoming a trend for your team) " I'm always concerned. I'm concerned about everything in our program so the only thing that we can do is learn from those experiences. It's nice to learn in a win. As I said, we took baby steps forward today. If you go back and you watch everything that happened in the last three minutes, the first two and a half minutes were really good. You know, you're talking about quick strikes against a team that generally doesn't give you quick strikes. We were able to break their pressure, like I said, run the set play, we got it to Jordan dunk, boom right at the rim and an and one. And then the next time down the floor we throw it to the middle, Dwayne or whoever it was, I think it was Dwayne, hits Ryan and now we get a two on one, boom, we capitalize. So we've just got to be able to carry those positive experiences all the way through. Yeah, I'm always concerned. It's something we're going to continue to work on and get better at."

(About Darius Perry's confidence coming back) "He did a much better job these last couple of weeks. Both his effort in practice and his play on the floor. He got tested a few times, on the defensive end, and I thought he did a terrific job at guarding the ball and not letting it get in the lane. It's good to see he's a much better shooter than he's shown all year. I'm not dumb, I know that's a big part of confidence. When you feel like you're not playing as many minutes, it's hard to be as confident as a guy that plays 30-34 minutes. That's where he's at and he's working his way out of it. I thought his contribution tonight was awesome."

(About Christen Cunningham effectiveness in the second half) "He has a toughness about him. When I met with him after the game, after the Duke game, on our day off, I just said, 'hey tell me what you're thinking.' He said, 'Coach, I screwed up.' He didn't use the word screwed. He said it three or four times. In a day and age where everyone wants to blame someone else and say, 'well, if he would have gotten open or if he would've done this.' When you have ownership like that you got to let him move forward. CC's an awesome kid. He is a general and I just think he's mentally tough. We need a couple other guys to keep following the leader and we're going to get better because of it. We got one of the toughest schedules in the entire country. We got 18 wins. I felt like we punted three games way. Make no mistake, we got to get better at closing games, and we will. As I said the other night, I love this group. They've done everything we've asked and more and they've exceeded a lot of people's expectations outside of our locker room."

(About Perry staying in the game after making the three) "Yes. He had been in there for a while, so it was really his turn to come out. But, knowing that Darius hasn't shot the ball well, the last thing I wanted to do was, once he hits a three, get him out of there. He's feeling good about himself. He's really contributing. Darius isn't a guy who gets tired. If it was Enoch or somebody who gets a little winded, whether it went in or not, you probably got to pull him out. Darius, he's an Energizer Bunny, so I want him to continue to feel good when he's out there on the floor."
(On Ryan's passing ability) "He's a good passer, sometimes he gets a little to cutesy with his passes. He looks one way and then throws the other. He threw the ball out of bounds, tonight on the break, if you can remember. I think that's just a function, like as I told him, 'you don't have to be the cutest guy in the room. Make the right solid strong play.' His defense has come miles. He's helped our team win a lot of games. He's got a really good mind for the game. He sees plays develop, just like he did when Jordan (Nwora) curled around and got open. He had the presence of mind to drop the defenders hand before he threw it over his hands so we could get that play.

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

(Opening Statement) "Obviously, a hard loss for us. It's our third one this year by a point. Just incredibly proud of my players, the way they competed today. Obviously, we fought for the full 40 minutes. Thought we defended great, about as well as you could guard them, rebounded great. They do a great job defensively as well, so it's hard to score against them, we knew it would be. Obviously, our bugaboo today was turnovers—thought we had some really poor turnovers that cost us in terms of offense and we just couldn't score enough. Obviously, a tremendous late run by our team, guys stepping up and making big plays. (Sophomore forward Jordan) Nwora made a heck of a block to save the win."

(On Louisville's 3-point field goals in the second half) "One of them was just (graduate guard Christen) Cunningham with three seconds on the shot clock from about 25 feet, so it was just a guy making a basketball play. I think one may have been a pick-and-pop with five man…that's hard to guard. They're going to make one of those every once in a while, because they shoot some, and you can't guard everything. Just a unique quality their team has is two five-men that come in and your always on guard for certain things, but those were obviously big shots. I guess they were 6-of-19, so we would've taken that if you had told us at the beginning of the day."

(On using the press earlier in the game) "No. I think, as media, y'all need to…it's okay, they struggled against Duke. There's a lot of teams that would've struggled against that press, and maybe they struggled a little bit today. That is much harder to deal with than people realize. The answer to your question is no, we don't play that way very often, so we didn't. When we got down late, just like Duke, we pressed a little bit. You try to do that in the middle of the game. It's all game pressure, and you do that with 20 minutes to go in the game and they dunked one on us today, right at the end, they're probably going to dunk two on us. It's more of the game pressure. Every team you play, in the last three minutes, when it's press like that, it's extremely difficult because in a little way, you're playing not to lose and game pressure changes things."

(On the final sequence with 3.5 seconds remaining) "Well, the one, they just blocked. I thought we stole it, which was fortunate. I thought our guys did a great job. We made it hard for them to get it in, and knocked the ball lose, and they blocked one. I can't even remember all the plays that happened in the last two minutes. I know (graduate guard) Shelton Mitchell had a chance, (senior forward) Eli (Thomas) had a chance. Obviously, you think about the ones you didn't make but, (graduate guard) Marcquise (Reed) jumped up and made some to give us the one possession game. It's unfortunate, because our kids competed so hard today and they probably deserved a little better. Just didn't work out."

(On choosing to tie up Sutton on the inbounds play) "Yes. Yes. Correct. That was right in front of our bench. We were going to try to get a trap and then play from there. And our guys had him in a good spot and it was a good play by our team."

(On outrebounding Louisville) "I don't know. Our kids played extremely hard. We obviously emphasized it. They're a good rebounding team, plus-four or five on the season. We're about the same. I just thought our kids really competed and I thought we blocked out, stayed home with people, and we're in position to not be in a ton of rotation situations, to not have hats on hats, so we were able to do that."

University of Louisville Athletics

Postgame Quotes | Louisville vs. Clemson

Players Mentioned

Christen Cunningham

Jordan Nwora

Darius Perry

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