Postgame Quotes
11/19/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 19, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Game Action 
Wake Forest Coach Dino Gaudio
On the UNCW game...
"I think the pace was a little slow for us. We like to play fast. Wow, there were a lot of possessions in that game. I think the players had fun but I don't know if the coaches did. I was a little disappointed on defense. Good win for us over as good basketball team that plays hard."
On the final score of the game...
"I wish we would have held them in the 60's. It's a different style, we tried to simulate it in practice but it is hard to simulate. I think we still shared the ball and scored a lot of points. It was good for us to play without our two point guards, Ish and Jeff in the first half. It was good we held together in light of that."
On 76 points in the paint tonight...
"We want to throw it inside. I thought Harvey might have taken a hasty, quick three. For the most part we are becoming more disciplined in the number of threes we are shooting. We have to let those big guys eat, we got to throw them the ball."
On the status of Ishmael Smith...
"Ish was released yesterday for increased activity. He hasn't even been running yet. Yesterday he ran. Monday was eight weeks since he had the surgery. We'll see. I would love for him to play on Monday night but we will see how he progresses."
Wake Forest Junior L.D. Williams
On the pressure from UNCW...
"Coach Kelsey put emphasis on not letting them come into our house and impose their will on us. We had to establish the game quick and get out and jump on them real fast. I made me happy to see that we didn't give into the pressure and I think it showed a lot of maturity."
On their ability to shoot threes...
"We weren't too happy with our defense on the parameter. We just got to go in at practice and correct some of those things. We need to close out the shooters better and we need to pick up and transition better. The score shows that we won by 32 but we were a little unhappy about how we played on defense."
Wake Forest Sophomore James Johnson
On how happy you were to see they were willing to run...
"Any time a team wants to come out and try to go pound for pound with us we like that. We have fast point guards, fast wings, and our big man can run fast as well. Playing our kind of tempo is what we want. Every game we are going to try to play our tempo, lock down and play some better defense."
Wake Forest Freshman Al-Farouq Aminu
On your performance tonight...
"I had a lot of rebounds and that has been a big emphasis for me this year. I am real proud of myself for that and for getting to the boards.
UNC-Wilmington Head Coach Benny Moss
Opening statement...
"We played a very, very good team tonight. I know they're young, but they're talented and they're big. Dino's doing a tremendous job. He's got them playing hard. He's got them defending. He's got them executing and playing in transition. They were just too much for us to handle tonight. I was proud of our guys because we're also young, but we're kind of beat up on our front line. We're doing the things we have to do. Our guys just have to be more consistent. It was almost a replay of our first two games. We got in big deficits and we got it back close, but there we had our own crowd to draw energy off of and we were able to get over the hump. Here, we'd get it to 10, 11, we even got it nine at one point. Against a good team, you have to take it to the next level and we weren't able to do that tonight."
On if the team could have done anything to combat Wake Forest's size inside...
"The thing that bothered me the most was our transition defense. On missed field goals, we were giving up layups and dunks in transition. That can't happen. We have to get the ball under control to half court. We've got to have everyone sprinting to the paint to build a wall with as small as we are. We have to make teams pitch it and then we have to scramble and close out from that point. We can't allow as many layups and dunks in transition. That was the biggest problem. We competed at times on the glass, but we weren't consistent enough."
On if he gave any consideration to trying to control the tempo of the game...
"We have to play to our strengths. I'd rather do it that way against a team like Wake Forest because at least we have a shooters chance. If we let them line up and take 35 seconds every time, they're just going to pound it down our throat even more. We didn't get enough out of our presses early. We just gave up the press. They were pushing the ball plenty fast. We only had four deflections for the entire game, which meant we weren't in tune, we weren't on our toes and we weren't being aggressive enough on the defensive end in the full court stuff early in the game.
On how Wake Forest defended UNC-Wilmington guard Chad Tomko...
"He was a little out of sync and a lot of that falls on me. I take responsibility for that. They have great size and they use their size. They could be an arms length away to help control his penetration, but still get a finger and a touch on the shot. They had a couple of blocks. I take responsibility because I felt that he forced a little bit and that's on me. I didn't call enough stuff to try to get him cleaner looks so that falls on me. We'll talk about it and watch video. He's just a sophomore and hopefully he'll understand that we're going to do other things to get him better shots within the flow of the game from this point on.
