Postgame Quotes
12/14/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 13, 2005
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Wake Forest Head Coach Skip Prosser
On the game:
"I don't think this game was that mysterious. I give credit to DePaul. I thought they did a great job isolating us. I think the tone of the game was set in the first several possessions where they scored at will. We gave up 84 points and I give DePaul credit because they did what they wanted to do."
On the turnovers:
"We either didn't get a good shot off or we drove the ball to them. We had some missed opportunities. When you are climbing a hill, like we were, you have to do all the little things -- you have to score when you have the chance. They gave us some opportunities to come back in the game and I don't think that we took advantage of that."
On the team's energy:
"I think that the team had a hard time generating some of its own energy. I give DePaul credit and they set the tone early in the game. Not to take away from what DePaul did, I think they actually took away our energy. I think that our inability to stop them defensively took away from our energy and our ability to score offensively."
On Trent Strickland and Justin Gray:
"We said that from day one that for us to be good, our veteran guys need to play well. I am not going to point fingers at those guys because they have played a lot of great basketball for us. I would rather praise DePaul for the way they played tonight."
DePaul Head Coach Jerry Wainwright
On playing Wake Forest:
"There are some familiar faces in the room. I love Wake Forest. I love Winston-Salem. I spent nine great years here. Every time I walk in this building and see the kids on the banners, I think of the time I spent with Bob Staak and Dave Odom. It's a great place to cut your coaching teeth, and it's a class room in the ACC to go against all those great coaches. My wife stayed at Xavier when I came to Wake, and Skip was an assistant for Pete Gillen down there. I've known Skip since he was a high school coach, and I'll look forward to getting out of the game, now we can talk basketball. His son is in coaching, my son is in coaching. What he has done here is remarkable. This game was brought to us."
On the game:
"This is a great example of the rule that always is about basketball, especially college basketball, it's not who you play, but it's when you play them. We lost two kids last night. My starting forward sprained his ankle at 9:50 in practice. My starting center reaggravated his at 9:55. We had mixed emotions as we walked out the building, but I thought our kids rallied."
On Wake Forest:
"Sometimes when you come off finals, there is a little bit of rust. It takes a while to get your legs, although I thought this game was played at a high level. I thought kids played a lot of offensive basketball. The only thing I would say is that when you play Wake, you have to pick your poison. We tried to close the perimeter down and left our post on an island. It's no fun being on an island with Eric Williams. He's going to push you into the ocean. He's a terrific player. I told him before the game I was so proud of the way he's developed his body and his stamina. I was at the under-20 team with him, Justin Gray and Chris Paul. Great kids.
On what this means for the program:
"They're going to have a terrific year, and obviously this is a great confidence builder for our program. We were facing four straight road games. Dayton, Wake, we're at Old Dominion Saturday, and we have to go to California next week. We really have played a difficult schedule and been in a lot of close games. We've taken everybody's best shot, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Our kids have toughened up and are starting to learn how to play together."