Postgame Quotes
1/2/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 2, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Wake Forest Head Coach Dino Gaudio
On the win against Presbyterian
"I want to give a tremendous amount of credit to Presbyterian. I thought they played very well. They matched us on the boards, 29 to 29. They had more offensive rebounds than we did, nine to seven. So, a lot of credit goes to those guys. For us, it was a little bit too easy, too early. We outscored them 20-6 and then they outscore us 25-9 after that stretch. I was disappointed with our mental approach after we got the lead. Like I said, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit. I'm giving it to Gregg Nibert and his kids."
On what bothered him the most about Wake Forest's performance
"I think the thing that upset me the most was our post defense. Our post defense wasn't good. [Al'Lonzo] Coleman, who's a freshman, he shoots 8-for-12 against us. We started the game trapping the post because that's just what we do and as you know they hit two threes. That was their first six points. So, we went to singling-up (against the post). Going into the game, VMI is the only school that the percentage of their attempts that are 3-pointers are most than Presbyterian. VMI is one, Presbyterian is two for percentage of 3-point attempts on the season. We knew we had to guard the 3-point line. We knew they were going to shoot a lot of threes. We doubled the post early because that's what we do. They hit a couple of threes, so then we quit doubling. Coleman hurt us in there. That was disappointing. The thing that hurt us on offense was our shot selection and hopefully we'll get a little better at that."
On his message to the team at halftime
"I told them I was very disappointed. Our transition defense was bad. Our mental approach wasn't good, and that's my responsibility. We were supposed to get the last shot of the half and we take a shot with whatever it was on the clock and they get a lay-up. When Ish takes the shot, we have to get balance. Our two has to get back on defense as does Ish."
Presbyterian Head Coach Gregg Nibert
On controlling the tempo against Wake Forest
"That's what we tried our hardest to do. We tried to make it a half-court game, which is really difficult playing against the two quickest point guards in the country. When we didn't turn it over we felt like we did make it a half-court game. We tried to make them play defense. We had a couple of bad stretches to begin the game. We had a couple of bad stretches in that second half when we turned the ball over and they really got it out and got some dunks and lay-ups. We couldn't give them any transition baskets, which we did off our turnovers and that was probably the difference in the game. We had 15 turnovers and they had eight."
On how excited his team was to be down two at halftime
"We were excited. We thought if we were within 10 points at halftime we might have a chance to do the ol' ESPN upset. It was 47 all with 9:56 to go and we had that one bad stretch in there. You can't give a good team like Wake easy baskets and easy lay-ups. That stretch cost us. But we were excited."
Wake Forest Center Chas McFarland
On sitting out the first half
"I deserve to sit out. My behavior was unacceptable the game before this. Coach Gaudio did the right thing."
On playing with emotion and whether that affects his game or not
"The last couple days I just let it slide off my back so it [the ejection] wasn't still in my head. You can't go out and play like that."
Wake Forest Forward James Johnson
On Wake Forest's demeanor in a hard-fought win
"We know we're pretty good and that we need to get better. We just needed to buckle down and play some defense. We needed to get their post less touches on their end and get our post more touches on our offensive end and we succeeded in doing that and we got the win."
On the importance of Wake Forest's transition offense
"We're a fast team. We try to be fast. The transition game is really our game. We got away from it a little bit trying to run a few sets, but when we needed it we got the fastbreak. We ran what we needed to run and we scored."
