North Carolina at Louisville Postgame Quotes

Louisville Head Coach Chris Mack

(Opening statement) "I thought there were some good moments for our team. Obviously, I know it has been a very tough season for Coach Williams and the Tar Heels, and it was made even tougher today when their second leading scorer and a guy that we were really preparing for goes out, and at the same time, one of their key subs goes out. I don't know if I've ever been in that situation as a coach other than maybe my fourth year in coaching. But, be that as it may, I had to concentrate on our team and I thought, for the most part, we were pretty good today. Jordan [Nwora] hit some shots. It was really good to see him rebound the way he did and we move on to a quick turnaround Monday night."

(It's the most minutes Malik [Williams] has played. I understand that Steven [Enoch] has a little ankle problem. Do you see his role continuing to expand? He had a double-double last time and almost this time.) "I wanted to play Steve, but he felt like he couldn't go today. If it's a blessing in disguise for him to be able to rest a little bit because we need Steve on Monday night. Malik can't play for 40 minutes and we can't play Dwayne [Sutton]. I know his ankle's bothering him, but we still have to figure out a way to get him on the floor and play through a little pain, even if it's not at 100%. More Malik playing the minutes that he did tonight was more of an indication of Steve just not being able to go. When he got tangled up with [Walker] Miller underneath, he sort of got dinged a little bit, and it's something he was dealing with since the Syracuse game when he got one-on-one coverage and twisted it. Hopefully we can heal him up in 48 hours to help our front court out."

(Talk about Malik and his performance the last two games.) "Malik means a lot to our team. Not just the statistics, which continue to get better offensively as he gains more confidence, but just his presence on the defensive end. His voice, his leadership in practice. He has come a long way. He's a guy that sat on my couch at Xavier, and I didn't want to recruit him. He slumped back in his chair and had his eyes half-open and he mumbled. He has grown so much. I love that kid, and I'm happy for him. He has put in a lot of work and his teammates respect the heck out of him. He's one of the best bigs in the league."

(With how you closed the first half, on an 11-2 run, to how you opened the second half, did your kids gain a little bit more confidence as they settled in?) "I think so. Our guys were juiced to play, and we just made some bad decisions early. At the same time, we made some good decisions and couldn't catch the ball as well. Being able to keep Carolina from getting out and transition, Armando Bacot could not really get much done in the post because I thought our guys were fronting and working and fighting. That's going to put a lot of pressure on Cole [Anthony]. We all know, and you saw in the second half, what he can do and take over a game, but that's a lot to ask for 35 or 36 minutes to put a team on your shoulders. We really wanted to try to eliminate their post-game as best we could, knowing that Garrison Brooks is out. Their options become really limited, so let's not have Bacot go for 17-and-10 tonight. You have a junior and a senior that should be able to front him and make his touches tough, and I thought they did that."

(David [Johnson] had a couple of turnovers early in the game, but how important was it to see him respond and not let that affect the way he played the rest of the game?) "He's stoic. He's a guy that doesn't let one bad play, or one really good play, affect him much. I think that really helps make him the player that he is. He has a very calming presence and he's very confident. And he's a smart learner, so whatever happens, maybe in the possession before, he sort of gets an understanding of what they're trying to do or how they're trying to play him. Or if he's on the defensive end, how they're trying to attack him. He makes adjustments, but he has to be sharper. That was a concern coming in, not this game, but him as a freshman, knowing that he was going to play some guys that are a little bit like Tyson when he was boxing and get up under you, play in your chest and your waist area. David being 6'5", that gives him a lot of advantages, but it doesn't necessarily give him an advantage when a water bug climbs up into them at 35, 37 feet. So he just has to be a little surer with the basketball. He has to recognize when they go under ball screens how to be a little bit more patient, and when we have the ball screen get twisted, so they can't keep going under. He'll progress in some of those areas."
(You guys went small a few times with the Malik and Steven out of the game, but still were dominant on the glass, especially on the offensive end. How are you able to sustain that through the entire game?) "Carolina right now is missing some guys. To be perfectly honest, maybe if we had done that a year ago with them, we might have got decimated on the glass. But we did a great job with the team that was presented. We blocked out. I don't ever have to worry about the Dwayne's toughness level and when Jordan gets double-figure rebounds, we're going to be even that much better rebounding the ball. That's a huge key, to play Carolina's transition is not letting them duck you in the post and it's keeping them off the glass. I thought in most of those areas we did a pretty good job."
(Did you have Fresh [Kimble] out there to start specifically to d-up Cole Anthony, and how would you rate how he played today?) "I thought defensively he did a pretty good job. A couple of those threes that Cole Anthony hit were on him, but those are just really, really tough shots and you see it every night in the NBA. I thought he did a really good job defensively. He was in the right spots and we challenged our team to make the game tough on him. Outside of maybe those step back threes, I thought we did a pretty good job. As you know, [Cole's] capable of going for 30 or 40 points, because he didn't, they weren't in the game."

(Do you feel you're playing a lot better than when you played Florida State the first time?)
"We are and I'm sure they are as well. We've both gone through the longest conference season there has ever been with 20 games. These are games that you want to play in and that you want to be meaningful. Both Florida State wants it to be meaningful and we did, and we've gotten ourselves to this point. They're going to be a heck of a challenge for our team. They're going to pressure the ball, they're going to switch everything, they're going to extend their defense all over the floor. We have to be able to get the shots we did in the first half against them and get better ones than we did in the second half."

What do you feel like you have to do better than what you did against them back in January to win?) "Anytime you play Florida State, it comes down to taking care of the basketball. You can't go down there and have 17 or 20 turnovers, and they can make you do that. Duke beats them at home, and yet Duke turns it over 20-something times. We have to be able to generate really good shots, and that's where it starts. Defensively, they hit a ton of threes on us, and MJ Walker specifically. We have to be a little more cognizant of that and we have to close out a little bit tighter. That presents a challenge because they have some quickness on the perimeter, but you want to beat them, that's what we got to do."

(What does it say about the state of college basketball, in this season in particular, that you've just beat two Hall of Fame coaches back-to-back by 41 points?) "That I should be in the Hall of Fame. I'm kidding, I have no idea what it says. We have some good players and those guys are excited. We're coming down on the home stretch of our season and we just have to continue to get better and want to improve and want to come to practice with the right mentality."

(The turnaround here is a little odd for this time of year. What are your thoughts on the way this has settled, and what will be expected in a couple of weeks anyway?) "I try to make the parallel to our team. You get in the NCAA tournament, you're going to have quick turnarounds. We have a familiarity with Florida State, as do they with us. They had to play on Saturday. I think years ago in some of these leagues, one team would have a Saturday-Monday and the other team would have a Wednesday-Monday. At least there's equity. They have the same circumstances that we do. We have to play on the road, and they already played here. That won't have anything to do with the outcome of the game. Our guys are well in-tuned with what Florida State does on both ends of the floor. It's just being up to the challenge to be better than them."

North Carolina Head Coach Roy Williams

(Opening Statement) "We didn't play as well as we wanted to play to say the least. We muddied it up a little bit at the end. It was a little uglier than they really are as well. Eighteen points off turnovers for us and to have 17 turnovers in a relatively low possession game is not going to work for us. Holding them to 51% on the game and 53% first half. We couldn't afford that. We're down 13 at the half and I thought if we got off to a good start in the second half then we would have a chance to be there at the end. They get off to a much better start. We had some opportunities that I thought we could have cashed in order to get back in the game. We had a steal and had the ball cross half court three different times going to our basket and we never got it. You shouldn't have those kind of turnovers but you got to give credit to Louisville because all three times they had somebody run from behind like Nwora (Jordan Nwora) ran past Cole (Williams) got to steal from Armando (Bacot) and he had two guys chasing Leaky (Black) when he got it. It's off of us out of bounds and Christian (Keeling) got it and had two guys bother him and we turn it over as well. Give him credit for, even when it looked like things were in our advantage and in our favor. They kept playing. I think they're really good. I would say we might need it. Nwora, Malik (Williams), Sutton (Dwayne Sutton) I love Sutton. They have the makings of a really good team; I don't have to evaluate Chris's team. He does that very well, as he does coaching. It wasn't very pretty, and we've got to play better."

(Coach, with Garrison (Brooks) out, nine different starting lineups now. Can you put that in perspective right now or is that something you're going to have to do maybe in a month or so from now?) "If I'm alive in a month or so I can guarantee I'm not going to think about this crap. I will be thinking about some way to figure it out so we'll be better. That kind of thing but it is part of the game.

"Last year we started four guys every regular season game. We started the same lineup except for Coby White missing one game. This year is exactly the opposite, but a lot of teams have injuries. We have more than I've ever had to say the least. We've missed more games by our scholarship players than any time in history, but we just have to play. North Carolina played Louisville today at four o'clock and we're going to play again on Tuesday regardless. I would have liked to have him out there but that's what happens."

(Roy, along those same lines, yet another game where you probably thought you were going to have Garrison (Brooks) until the day of and you're not able to get him, can you provide some perspective in terms of how that changes the game plan?) "Well it does. We practiced him a little, but he wasn't feeling good earlier in the week, we kept him out of practice and just let him go a little bit on Friday. We worked Leaky (Black) into the four spot in practice, first time we have all year was yesterday. We hoped Garrison would feel better today and he participated in some of the stuff in practice yesterday but instead we got here last night, and he felt a little worse and this morning got up and felt even worse. We knew about it. When we came for shoot around and he couldn't even come to shoot around because his temperature was up there, and he wasn't feeling really well. At that time, it's hard to try to put some things in and make some changes but again it's part of the game, it's part of what happens. I'm tired of it happening to us because it's at least four or five games that we don't know we won't have one of our most important players until right before the game time, so it does make it more difficult, but he did try to do some things like I said. We kept him out of a bunch of it.

"Basically, this morning in shoot around was when we knew we weren't going to have him."

(Louisville is in position to win the league with three games to. Seeing them in person, what were you most impressed with about them?) "Well, watching them on tape as much as I have and seeing them in other games, I think they have all kinds of phases on offense. They can score inside with their big guys, they drive into the basket with the perimeter guys, and they can shoot the ball from the 3-pt-point line. They defend okay, and sometimes really, really well. They have a lot of guys that can switch and play guys in different positions. They didn't play zone today but I watched them in one of the games that was before this and they played zone and it was really good for them. So I think they can guard you, score inside, score outside, push the ball and score in transition. I think they have all the things, from a distance and again Chris knows a million times better than I do, but when you've only lost three games in the ACC at this point, you're really good and I know everybody's is going to say it's a down year in the ACC, but it's still pretty daggone competitive. So I think they have one of the chances of those teams that can win the whole blessed thing. I really do believe that. Now, they've got to get some breaks and they've got to play well, they're not going to win it if they don't play well, but I think they're a fantastic team."

University of Louisville Athletics

Players Mentioned

Jordan Nwora

Dwayne Sutton

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