Post-Game Quotes
1/31/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 31, 2004
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Wake Forest Postgame Quotes
Jan. 31, 2004 vs. Virginia
Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser
"I was happy to get out of here with a win today. The play early on was about as well as we could play. Virginia is a good team with some really good wins on the season. WIth the two weeks prior we needed to come out with a good game and we did. Our shots fell and we guarded really well too. One feeds off of the other. I don't know what the ACC record is, but we tried to play a lot of guys -- 11 in the first half. But I was never really comfortable during the game, and that's a credit to Virginia."
On shutting down Virginia's three-point attack:
"A blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while. We made an extra effort to guard the three better. We paid particular attention in the 24 hours to Billet and Smith. We did not want to allow a high percentage of threes. Last year we held Billet to 25 points. He torched us and we wanted to play harder against him."
On Justin Gray:
"He played well offensively for us. The other day he went 1-for-10 at Florida State, but I told him I'll never take you out for a taking a shot, but I will take you out if you're not rebounding or playing defense. I don't want him hesitating; he needs to be shooting."
"It's hard to describe an ACC game as being overjoyous. When shots are falling, everything seems fun. The pizza and the soda taste better after the game. So we had an uproariously good time out there. It's always fun when the threes are falling."
On Kyle Visser:
"There are a lot of good players in Michigan. If you look at Tom Izzo and Tommy Amaker, they have recruited some pretty good players. The story is true, we were in the airport in Grand Rapids recruiting another player and someone told me to go check out Kyle Visser. He's a good kid, a hard worker, a good listener and was on the Dean's List last semester. He's not the most fluid free throw shooter, so he wears out Coach Gaudio. It's always nice when the input equals the output."
Virginia head coach Pete Gillen
"I thought a big key was that Wake came out and played tremendously well in the first four or five minutes. They pushed it and hit threes off the break. Gray was great and on fire. That was a big difference in the game and we just never recovered. It's tough to come back after that and we fought hard. They made threes and we didn't. The way they played today, they could beat a lot of teams. We were stunned."
"We kept scratching and clawing, but its a 40-minute game. It was very physical and we were both banging. We were hoping to try to get it to10 with 10 minutes to go. But we dug a hole. We give a lot of credit to them."
"They (Wake) did a good job on Todd Billet. They keyed in on stopping him and did good. Kyle Visser is a terrific player; he's active and mobile. He's a great player. "
"Take your hat off to Wake. Skip has a great team. They knocked us off in the first four or five minutes and we just couldn't recover."
Sophomore Justin Gray
"We had an excellent start with threes and steals. We ran the ball great and set the tone early. The key coming into the game was defense. Billet dropped 25 last year on us and we knew that we had to stop him early.
On his shooting:
"I know I can make the shots, so every time I am open, I am going to shoot. I get a lot of encouragement from Coach and the team to keep shooting the ball. I felt confident with my shot today and got into a groove early."
Sophomore Trent Strickland
On the quick start:
"We knew that this game was going to be important and felt we needed it to finish out the season strong."
On Visser:
"He's been playing really well and stepped up when he had his chance, which is why he's playing a lot more."
Freshman Chris Paul
"Teams have been shooting high percentage threes against us the past two weeks and we knew with Billet on the other side, we had to shoot the ball better and guard their shots better. We came out with great intensity knowing we had to win this game."
