Miami (FL) vs. Louisville Postgame Quotes

Louisville Head Coach Chris Mack
(Opening Statement) "I think any time you come off two straight defeats, I think there is a time where you battle a little confidence. I thought we came out ready to go the last four or five minutes in the first half, as I told my team, 'we have to figure out why we are good, what makes us good?' I thought we lost that at the end of the first half. Once we did that, Miami felt like they were right there. They came out and played with a lot of confidence in the second half. It is very interesting playing them as you guys saw. They space the floor. They go one-on-one. They have guys who can make some shots. Again, they ended up shooting 25-27 percent from the three but it doesn't make you feel much better when you are up seven or eight and they are launching threes from 32 feet. We have to be better offensively. We were really good in the first 15 minutes. This team has to figure out, and I have to figure out why that is. Why are we good in the first 15 minutes and not able to sustain it? As I suspect it is because this team has to figure out this is what makes us good."

(About Darius Perry's play) "Darius (Perry) did a great job. He's been playing a little more off the ball but the value of him being able to play both on and off the ball showed tonight. He was, by far, our best point guard. I think at times that position gets maligned for us. We may have to do it by committee. Each of those guys have shown, during difference periods of time, that they can do the job. They just haven't been consistent like we need them to be. It was great to see Darius, as a junior, step up and make some plays down the stretch. Not just on the offensive end, but also on the defensive end.

(Jordan Nwora matched his season high in rebounds and had four assists, what's changed) "Well, I would tell you that the assists deal would probably be a little unfair to anybody in the last two games. Simply because both of those teams don't allow a lot of passing. They deny everything, one pass away. So your assists as a team are going to be left low unless you got a dynamic, playmaking dude. I've had several talks with Jordan about affecting the game in more ways than just scoring. I really feel like he's tried to do that the last couple games, and we need him to understand what makes him good is doing just that. Not just the scoring. We need it all from him. We need the play on the defensive end. We need him to rebound. We need him to make great decisions with the ball. We need him to play like a junior. I think the last couple games he's really responded and done that."

(On using both Steven Enoch and Malik Williams) "Yeah we tried to go to Steve, without watching on film, it just felt like being down there he was settling for eight foot jump hooks instead of three feet. I know Rodney Miller's a big dude and I know he's trying to push Steven out. Steven's got to be able to seal deeper. The best move is no move. Shaq showed that years ago. If we can establish Steve deeper and lower, with some movement on the perimeter. I thought in the beginning of the second half our guys weren't moving around much, and they were trying to throw the ball into Steve with four guys staring at him. Malik comes in and he provides some things defensively. He was a lot more assertive around the basket in the second half offensively, and that's what I need to see out of him."

(On what did it means to have other scores besides Jordan (Nwora) contribute) "We need our older players … guys that are very experienced. We need them to step up offensively. If we're playing together, if we're pushing the ball. If we're moving the ball in the half court, if we're screening from one another, and the ball gets reversed from side to side. We'll get some good stuff. I think we did that in the first 15 minutes, and maybe the last five minutes, but we have to be more consistent."

(About the long stretch with just one basketball game, is the team getting back into kind of a rhythm) "Yeah it's a little odd to say the least. I mean you play, you're in here in January and you have six, seven days off. It's a little odd, but, contrary to some I don't make the schedule."

(How is Ryan [McMahon] responding to coming off the bench and how nice was it to see him sink that big three there at the end?) "It was really nice. Outside of the three that he hit, I really liked how he played with some emotion and some fire. I think he needs to do that. This is his senior year, and you only get one senior year. Other guys will be back, but this is Ryan's last time on the floor. It is Dwayne [Sutton]'s last time on the floor. How do you want to be remembered? We all know Ryan can shoot. He has gone through a little bit of a slump, but he has to bring those other things to the table. How much does it mean? I talk to our guys about how you run the race is often determined by how much the race means to you. It was good to see Ryan play with a lot of passion and talk to his teammates and we need that from all the older guys."

(About the challenges of gaining experience for Samuell Williamson along) "It's hard. It's hard. You sit in my seat, it's hard. You want to be able to get him out there and play through mistakes and become experienced. Those are the same mistakes the older guys made when they were younger. I do know that I have to play them, so I'm going to have to live with some of those, but they're going to have to know that if you make too many of them, you're not going to be in the game for very long. Not at this level, we're trying to win and trying to get a deeper team. Quite honestly, he and David [Johnson] made some bonehead plays in the second half and I don't care if they're a freshman or not, we're trying to win. They have to be better and we have to be better. I'm going to keep putting them out there, but they have to be better."

(On Dwayne Sutton's improved play) "I don't know if I was being very honest, a message to strictly Dwayne. Dwayne's a guy I don't worry about. He's always going to be doing it for the right reason. He's always going to play for his teammates. I do get on him in practice to be more vocal, to be more of a leader. That's what we lack at times. He's been through so many experiences and guys on the team respect the heck out of him because they know he plays for Louisville and that's never a question. When he gets close to double figures or scores double figures, in rebounds the way he did tonight, it changes our team. It's good to see him respond."

(On conversations with Jordan Nwora after the Kentucky game) "I think he took a long look at how he affected the team. We certainly pointed out on film, but he's a smart kid. You got to have a willingness to change as well. He is a guy that does care about his teammates and does care about winning. He's become so much of a better player from last year to this year. The strides he's made on the defensive end… all you got to do is pop in a tape from last year. I know he wants to become better, and I say this all the time, if he can do it without me teaching, coaching, and mentoring, then he wouldn't need a coach. I think he's finding what he needs to do to affect the game and that's great to see."

(On if Mack saw a defensive improvement and winning before the road games) "Getting a win is always important. Not important because they're at home or on the road, every game we play we play to win. I'll tell you that Florida State is an excellent team, hopefully we learned a lesson, and hopefully we will become better because of it. I think we will be. Tonight, the first 15 or 16 minutes of the game, we were as good as we've been all year. For the next eight or 10 minutes we weren't. As a coach, you're always trying to improve your team and I thought we took a step forward in a lot of ways tonight."

Miami Head Coach Jim Larrañaga
(Opening statement) "Coming off of the Duke game and knowing that Louisville is very, very tough at home here and we're very short-handed right now, we decided to start the game in a zone, which we never do. Didn't work so good. We fell behind 30-10, made some adjustments, made some changes, our guys started to really pull together and make some shots, make some good plays, make some good decisions. Cut it back within 11… and in the second half, I thought we really played well for about 15 minutes, but Louisville stepped it up in that last five minutes, ran a couple of flare screens, hit some threes and that was the difference."

(Chris Lykes seemed like he wasn't getting the looks that he wanted in the second half. What were they doing to contain him, or was he just having a night where shots weren't falling – in the second half specifically?) "Well, the game is two halves. He had 13 at halftime. We needed other guys to step up. Kam (McGusty) stepped up. Different matchups in the second half and he ended up having the hot hand and when you got a guy with a hot hand you go to him. It's not a reflection of Chris playing bad or missing shots. It's that, you know, DJ Vasiljevic, who's also a very fine scorer, he did not score in the first half until there was like a minute to go. And then he hit a couple of free throws and made a three and all of a sudden he's got five. We're trying to really take advantage of our three guards who are our three leading scorers. So, no it's not just Chris it's Chris, Kam, DJ provide that."

(Your team shot less than 30 percent for the game. How much of that do you attribute to just missing open shots and/or Louisville's defense?) "Well, I think there's, there's two things. The first is, when we got ourselves in a rush, and didn't make any passes, came down the floor and shot quickly, we didn't make any of those. And so, I'm guessing we might have taken 12 to 15 shots like that. When we didn't, I think we shot a good percentage, but when you go like 0-for-15 or 1-for-15 on shots and you don't make any passes. And then it's a problem."

(Coach, you got it to five twice and the second time, Perry made that move to the lane and then he had another shot and made it. Perry got into the lane though and created towards the end that really kind of hurt you. Can you just kind of talking about what he does out there offensively for them?) "When you have a player like (Jordan) Nwora who gets a lot of attention, and then they basically went four around one to start the second half and just posted (Steven) Enoch. He's a tough matchup for us. We ended up taking Rodney Miller out and went with Sam Waardenburg on him, and then fronting him. And then as the game moves on, coaches are making some adjustments. And what they did, I said earlier, they went to that flare screen and Perry was able to find (Ryan) McMahon and either before that or the right after that, he got the drive to the basket and made it with his left hand. So he made some very good plays down the stretch."

(This was obviously a very different game from your Saturday game, but is Duke that much better than everybody else this league?) "The answer to that is really they were much better than us on Saturday. That doesn't have to do with how Louisville, Florida State, or Virginia will play them. Everybody has their own style and kids don't play the same way every night. And we have a very hard time defensively against everybody. And our players know it, our defense and our rebounding have not been good this year, and Duke was able to take advantage of both categories."

(You had a chance to cut it to two very late and you had three starters that played at least 37 minutes, did you see fatigue become a factor in the last few minutes?) "I know my coaches told me to take them out, I said no. You only get so many opportunities to play a top 10 team on their home court and be within five points with just a few minutes ago. And the only guys that can get us to the finish line, are those three guards because the other guards are freshmen. I'm not going to ask them to do that. And the frontcourt guys are not scorers, they don't score a lot of points. So I take those guys out, which I did in the first half and rested of them for just a few minutes and the lead balloon from six to 16. So, our choices are they play for the rest of the game, they can rest tomorrow and Thursday because we don't play until Sunday".

(On how teams stack up in the ACC right now) "If you ask me, we've got the toughest, especially January, schedule in the conference. We played Louisville twice, we've got Duke again at Cameron, we've got Florida State. We've got a really, tough schedule. We're banged up quite a bit. We haven't seen everybody, so the question about how Duke compares to everybody else, I don't know. I watch games on TV. But the league is different this year than it has been in quite some time - since I've been in the conference. We had 13 all-conference players move on and graduate, go to the pros. So there are a lot of new faces. One of the advantages that Louisville has is, they've got an older veteran team. Just look at their ages. 22, 22, 23, 23, 23. I got guys on my team still 17 years old. We have a fourth-year player in Sam Waardenburg who is 20. So, he's three years younger than a guy he was going against. And anybody that follows college basketball knows, experience means a lot. Age means a lot. It's normally those guys that carry the load, and that's what you see in Louisville. It doesn't mean they're going to beat every team, but they're going to be right there."

University of Louisville Athletics

Players Mentioned

Steven Enoch

Jordan Nwora

Darius Perry

Dwayne Sutton

Malik Williams

Samuell Williamson

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