Virginia at Louisville Postgame Quotes

Louisville Head Coach Chris Mack

(Opening Statement) "I'd like to talk about Virginia's scoring troubles. It took a heck of an effort, you know, I don't want to mispronounce his name (Tomas Woldetensae) but that's one of the best shooting performances I've seen. They did a real simple action and it's just tough to guard when a guy gets that hot. We put multiple defenders on him and their other players. Kihei (Clark) stepped up when we help try to, sort of, double as he came off the screen. But, they just kept answering time after time. But I give our guys a lot of credit, you know, you get up as many points as we did and then see that lead evaporate as Virginia has done in so many times before. I'm sure that was in the back of our guy's minds but our resiliency was what was needed. And you're going to have to do that when you play against Virginia who, in my opinion, is just getting better and better and better and has the looks of an NCAA Tournament team and it's not even close. Very fortunate."

(About the (losing) streak against Virginia since you weren't here for a lot of it maybe doesn't mean as much to you but did any of your players talk about it right now or afterwards?) "No, we don't talk about that stuff. We just sort of talk about what we have to do to beat the team that's in front of us. I'm sure they have similar streaks to a lot of teams. When you win 35 games every year for the last four or five years, not too many teams are beating you. That's what happens when you win a national championship or you win in conference, how many years in a row? You're going to beat a lot of teams. They've had to turn over their roster, their culture, and their style of play, and their identity has not changed, they're continuing to get better. It was a hard, hard fought victory for our team."

(About the resiliency showed at the end of the game. When shots aren't falling like that is it just figuring out a way to win this a different way?) "I mean, the biggest thing that you have to do, you have to try to find out, as a coach, is how to create really good shots. You know, they're such a smart team and they don't need a timeout to adjust to an action or a play or a particular player. So, you have to try to figure out a way, as a coach, to continually try to get the best looks for your guys as much as possible. You know they're not going to gamble. You know if you're trying to tilt the floor and get the ball to the other side, so you got to have space to operate and they're smart and they sit in the lane they know exactly, they can sense what you're trying to do. When you're trying to use a ball screen to free up your guard. They attack it. When, 'okay now we're going to slip it,' they sniff it out, and they don't attack it. They're just really, really smart and disciplined. They're tough, and they do it every possession for the entire game. If you told me we'd score 80 points... I mean at halftime we scored 44 points, and all you keep hearing is like 'hey if you get to 60 against Virginia you can win,' and I'm saying, 'we score 16 points in the second half we're going to lose.' You know, just give our guys credit for sort of staying with it. I don't think there's one way to beat Virginia, you just have to find a way to survive their identity."

(One thing that stands out is the free throws, how were you able to get to the foul line so much?) "Well, we got to four or five team fouls on them in the first three or four minutes of the second half. We hammer that across to our guys: continue to attack, drive the ball, offensive rebound, figure out ways to create contact, because then their physicality, whether they're holding you on a cut, whether they're bumping a roll on the ball screen, whether they're trying to cut off the drive, it becomes a little less aggressive because there's a penalty of having to go to the line. Being able to draw four or five team fouls at that first four-minute war, I think it was set the tone. Boston College did the same thing at their place in the first half. Diakite was on the bench, and it completely changed the game. So, it's easier said than done if you'd say to get them in foul trouble. They're really good defensively, they're very disciplined, so we were fortunate and we created contact in a lot of situations."

(Steve Enoch and Malik Williams, it seemed like both of them had big moments, especially late. What was their impact?) "Huge. Huge. Steve sits on the bench for a little while, then comes in the game and absolutely goes to work on the low block when we needed some baskets around the basket. It is so hard. They lead in blocked shots. They're so big. They don't foul. You saw in the first half, both Malik and Steve hit their jump-up block, and that hasn't happened all year. They adjusted. I thought Malik's effort on the offensive glass was huge for our team. Being the anchor that Steven was really helped our team stabilize deep in the second half."

(How much have you watched this team grow, just the way they've been able to get out some wins?) "We have older guys, and we have guys that want to go out the right way. But you have to earn that. Dwayne (Sutton), Ryan (McMahon), and Steve (Enoch), Fresh (Kimble) - who wasn't here but had a tough couple of years, loses his coach - those guys are all about each other. We have a deep bench. You look at our bench production versus UVa's or a lot of teams that we've played. Guys are generally pulling for one another. Darius gets off to a great start and he's the first one on the bench cheering for David Johnson as he goes down the lane and gets fouled. You don't always get that."

(About recent turnovers, UVA is one of the best defensive teams in the country and only six today.) "They're not a high turnover team. Unless you're just being very loose and casual with the ball, you're not going to turn the ball over most of the time. [Mamadi] Diakite can be very handsy and bat some balls away, especially when he's ball-screen defensing. For the most part, they're very, very content to play very good positional defense and make you take a challenged shot and not gamble, because that leads to fouling and that's not what UVa generally does. Be that as it may, we still had to take care of the ball. We weren't casual with it. We worked deeper into the shot clock at times to keep our turnovers to where they were which was something that needed to be done in order to win the game."

(About anticipating this team being as good of an outside shooting team?) "I've said it all year, I think Ryan and Jordan are elite-level shooters. I also think a guy like Darius, when he doesn't have the pressure of running the point at times, he's a really good three-point shooter. I think the other guys get a little confidence from watching their teammates shoot the ball. We can shoot it."

(On what Chris saw in his team) "They do this a lot in games. They talk amongst each other in timeouts and huddles. I generally meet with my coaching staff and talk about strategy, adjustments, offense, defensively what do they see. I'll take a main message or two back to the team. Those guys are a lot more vocal than most of the teams I've coached. They're smart. They see things. They have enough humility to take it from a teammate. They believe in how we play. They believe in our system. I also have a lot of trust in those guys. I ask them, 'do you want to go zone,' 'do we want to stay man.' That wouldn't be the case in certain years, but it is now. Again, I've got older guys that have been through it and they recognize what is happening on the floor. They have belief in one another. They're all in. Bottom line, it's their team. They're going to be remembered. Hopefully Kenny (Klein) lets me stay for a few more years and I coach many more teams, but that's Dwayne Sutton's one and only chance to go out as a senior. Ryan, Steve, all those guys down the line."

(On the technical foul) "I can't get into the officiating. I thought it was a bad call. It's a tie game, but he's the official and he's right in that situation. Sometimes my wife is right in arguments and I still think she's wrong."

(On David Johnson in the last five minutes) "David (Johnson) is our best playmaker, he just is. He's got great size; he can see who's helping in on ball screens. It felt like defensively, although he's a freshman, maybe give us a little bit more length out there. That was really it. We played Fresh (Kimble) along with him, because I think Fresh is probably our best perimeter defender but he's a little bit smaller at times. That was the thinking behind it. I'll be honest with you, anybody in the crowd could've picked out who was going to guard the kid, he was going to score. We got to be better at off the ball screening action. It's very very simple but the kid was reading it like Ray Allen in the NBA finals and was banging shots. We went zone a couple times, I felt like they got good looks out of that. It's basketball, sometimes those things happen but fortunately made enough plays at the other end to win the game.

Virginia Coach Tony Bennett

(About the difference in the final three minutes and change?)
"First to start the game, they shot lights out and we didn't. We knew they could shoot, but you have to trust the defense behind you and try to pressure the ball so, I thought we adjusted well. But, I thought some key baskets inside that, they got. They went right inside, and then we gave up a couple of key offensive rebounds that I thought we had. And those are play-hard-ball gets. You have come up with those, but that doesn't take away from how well our guys fought and how they came back and we were better defensively, but we have to finish the play and to give up the eight offensive rebounds and I think a couple of them were at crucial times and there were some plays made and, it's just one of those games where it didn't look good early because of how they were shooting. But, our guys hung in there and again, usually our defense keeps us in there, well this time, our offense had to kind of keep us in there, and Louisville's a very good team obviously. You can see that."

(About UVa fouls less than any team in the country. About today's 20 fouls tonight?) "I guess we fouled them. I'll look at the tape. It's a physical game, and a lot of stuff is happening and we try to play very good position, and when guys are dribbling and putting the ball on the floor hard, there's contact all over. But possessions are so valuable in those kinds of games, and you hate when you look at how many times we put them on the line, the discrepancy, you just battle. We'll go to the film and see what we can do better, with our positioning. But I think the rebounding is going to stand out when we gave them some of those offensive rebounds and that puts you in a little bit of a pickle so to speak, where if you go and double the post, they got so many good shooters around it, but if you don't, that's why we put our big fella in there, Francisco Caffaro, who was very physical. I thought he did a good job, but there's a lot of banging going on and I thought Steven (Enoch) made some really nice plays even when he was well defended one on one."

(About Tomas Woldetensae's development recently and what can that do for UVa going forward?) "Yeah, I think you all saw that he and Kihei (Clark). Obviously, 11/22 from three we haven't seen that for quite a while. Tomas was discouraged early because he gave up a few threes and we challenged him. He felt it but, you can see he's getting more and more comfortable. He's got a very good feel, he's aggressive with, what we like to say, 'hunting his shot'. Our guys did a good job of finding them and screening them. We screened well. He gives us offense. Our offense kept us in, got us back in it. He and Kihei and then we made some aggressive plays and that that makes us a different team but then you can't forget how good you have to be defensively and I thought there was just a few times we had some breakdowns that cost us. What makes Louisville good is they seem like they can play in the 50s and in the 80s, and I guess we showed we can play in the 73s now but we have to see if we can consistently do that. That's what makes them good as their ability to play at different paces and different styles."

(Does Coach Bennett think about the success he's had against this team) "You know me, I don't even have a social media account. I don't read things. It's about us. We have to play well and for whatever reason, the ACC is not getting a lot of respect. We played well against a very good team and, hopefully, but it's just what's next for us. Maybe our guys are aware of that. I want our guys to play with an edge and keep finding ways to be the best. We talked about it, being the best version of themselves. They took our message before the game was leave this place a better team when we leave. You want to leave it better than you found it in a way but leave this place a better team. So I don't know if that means you're going to win. Who can say that, you sit there and look at these guys before the game 'We're winning this one' but I say to just leave it a better team and I think we did that today. There's still things that we can improve but you saw a great environment for college basketball. We took a step in defeat. I can handle being beat. I just don't like losing, and we didn't lose today."

(How far has Kihei (Clark) come as an outside shooter?) "Yeah, he works at it and we need that and obviously he got some great looks. Guys made some plays for him. I thought he was going make that three, Louisville went to switching one through five and he sort of backed Enoch or Williams down late in the game, he backed him up and he got a real clean look, and that was the one I know he really wanted and we wanted. He certainly has improved and he is so quick so he's a threat that way at his size and the better he shoots, the more dynamic he is because of his quickness and his ability to touch the paint."

(The last four or five minutes, they went to (David) Johnson what was the difference when he's out there on the floor?) "His size is great. He really attacked, Chris (Mack) ran some good stuff to get him downhill. He made the plays and again we probably had a couple breakdowns where we either reached or leaned and weren't quite right but the young man, being a freshmen from this area, he showed hometown good tonight in that setting. We probably had a couple breakdowns, but late in the game, it comes down to making plays. They made a few more plays than we did. We made some plays, so I'm not saying we didn't, but it usually comes down to that last few possessions, few minutes of games."

(As you scouted Louisville, what did you notice about their offense?) "When they played Georgia Tech, they were having a little trouble, Georgia Tech played great and boom, they went right inside. against Wake Forest. I thought all the sudden you saw Sutton just start attacking off the bounce, so they can slash they can score inside, obviously can score outside with the likes (Jordan) Nwora. It's just a multi-faceted team that when you can score in different ways, play in different styles that makes you effective. We had some ability to do that at times last year. We actually showed a little bit with Mamadi (Diakite) inside and our guys outside today, but that's what watching them how they win in different ways, offensively and they threw some zone at us, switching man to man, they played their typical man so they got all the bases covered."

University of Louisville Athletics

Players Mentioned

David Johnson

Dwayne Sutton

Malik Williams

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