Post Game Quotes
11/18/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 18, 2004
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Wake Forest Head Coach Skip Prosser
On the Game:
"Virginia Commonwealth played with great resilience. We had a great run to start the game in the first half. We came back to take the lead. We had another run to come back to put us up 15. Give a lot of credit to Coach Capel and his kids. At times we played very very well, and at other times we didn't. The way we played as quickly as we pushed the ball, you may have have more turnovers because you have more possession. I think some of our decision-making in transition certainly needs improvement and we have a lot of work to do. We have played ostensibly the best team in the Atlantic-10 and we've played one of the better teams in the colonia. We'll take our day off tomorrow and get ready for Yale on Monday. I think we have played two good teams and not everybody does that right out of the chute. Monday, Yale is one of the favorites for the Ivy League championship. Again, we're not playing the bottom teams, we're playing teams that are among the top in their divisions."
On Improvement of the Defense in the Second Half:
"They shot under 40 percent. They shot 22 percent from three's and I think that our defense was better for longer stretches. We'll try to build on that. That first half was one of the most run oriented first halves. We had one, they had one, etc. When we get stops we can get spurts. We had a lot of things working but at this time of year I think that's natural."
On the Atmosphere:
"The number of phone calls I got from friends across the country about the atmosphere Monday night against GW was tremendous. I think that crowd has really been a big help for us."
Junior Eric Williams
On the Game:
"The coach has been talking about it for awhile. He's been saying that we can't go on a really big run and then be lackadaisical. The first couple minutes we played hard and jumped on them early. They caught up during the middle of the first half and at the end we tried to punch it to them again. That's what coach has been talking about and we have to be consistent about it."
Junior Trent Strickland
On the Game:
"I think it helped us learn that we have to play for 40 minutes and keep our intensity level up. They also let us know that we're a good team because we're beating teams that are good. The teams we're playing are not bad at all and we're learning a lot from playing good teams. That's what we're about, we have a lot of talent on this team. I think that coach picked the schedule he did for a reason, and that's just to challenge us."
VCU Coach Jeff Capel
On the Game:
"First off I want to congratulate Wake Forest. They're a heck of a basketball team. They're well coached, explosive, play hard, play together, and play the right way. Their team plays like they're on a mission. They got us playing faster than we wanted to, but I'm proud of the way our guys played."
"We knew Wake would attack us early. Our guys are not use to this type of atmosphere. Last year in the NCAA tournament we played them in ACC country, but in the NCAA tournament there were also Florida, Manhattan, and Duke fans there. In the tournament, everyone gets behind the underdog."
"When I played at Duke, they were really good, and they're really good now. I played against Duncan and Childress. This is a great place to play college basketball. The students here have a passion for this team. I remember when I was a ball boy, that wasn't the case. This place hasn't been too kind to me. I was 1-8 versus Wake as a player and I even broke my ankle here as an AAU player."