Wake Forest vs. Indiana Postgame Quotes
12/3/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 3, 2008
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2008-09 Wake Forest Men's Basketball
Postgame Quotes - The Indiana Game
December 3, 2008
Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum - Winston-Salem, N.C.
Wake Forest Head Coach Dino Gaudio
On the game...
"I told our kids, I thought we played hard, but I thought we could have played a little better then we played. I don't want to take anything away from Indiana. I thought they were a hard, tough basketball team. A tremendous amount of credit goes to Coach Crean. Good win for Wake Forest, good win for the ACC."
On your top scorer not getting a lot of points...
"They played a box and one on Jeff in the first half but we have other options. We shot the ball well. We made some threes for a change. If they just take away one guy I think we have enough other options that we can score the ball with."
On Al-Farouq Aminu's blocks...
"He can alter shots. We haven't had a shot-blocking team like this in a long, long time. When you've got Tony (Woods) in there that can block shots with Al-Farouq and so can James (Johnson). When young Ty (Walker) comes in, he can alter shots. We want to do that and we practice it. Now we are telling them if you can get a piece, get a piece."
On how the team played together...
"You know what we did tonight, we over passed the ball. We just have to do what the game tells us to do. If you are supposed to pass, pass. If you should shoot, shoot. James Johnson set the tone at the beginning of the game. He was really unselfish and threw the ball to his buddies. The guys have been playing really well together."
Wake Forest Players
Sophomore Jeff Teague
On how you feel about your performance tonight...
"I feel we played well as a team. We didn't rebound as well as we did last game. I really didn't care about my individual performance, I just wanted to beat them. We got the win and I am happy about it."
On how you feel about Indiana focusing on you...
"I was really surprised about that. We have so many good players; I couldn't believe they ran box and one on me. I told L.D. (Williams) and James (Johnson) to take the shots and make them. They did what they were supposed to do."
Sophomore James Johnson
On the team playing off of you from the start...
"Jeff Teague is like a brother to me. I would never want him to lose to a team like Indiana, even though they are good and feisty. Jeff told me to shoot the ball, so I shot the ball and we went from there."
On playing unselfishly tonight...
"We have a team this year. We have a strong bench. When I pass to any of my teammates on the floor, I have all trust in them to do what they need to do. We have full faith in our team and we are going to keep going with that."
Junior L.D. Williams
On taking Jeff Teague's dunk...
"Honest to goodness if I knew Jeff was on the wing, I would have let him get it, just because we were playing Indiana. If he would have told me to run through I would have. It's exciting playing with explosive guys like that. You never know who the ball is going to."
On shooting three-pointers...
"Our strength is getting to the basket. We're not really shooting well from the three and when we do shoot well, we aren't shooting many. We score a lot of points without shooting threes. We don't live or die by shooting threes. If we have open looks, coach encourages us to shoot them."
Indiana Head Coach Tom Crean
Opening statement...
"In a season that's full of firsts for us at Indiana, this was certainly the biggest one to date to come into a road game against an excellent team that's only going to be better. To see the fan support that they have, it's really amazing and awesome. There was no preparation for that so we didn't really try to. We tried to prepare for the team, which was going to be hard enough. Before we can make strides, we have to learn to compete at a higher level for a longer period of time and before we can learn to compete, we have to learn to talk more to one another. We've got to learn to listen better. I guess it's all those things that you would expect with a brand new young team. I'm learning it for the first time too. It's just different. Wake Forest deserves a lot of credit in the sense that they are relentless with how they rebound. They are relentless with getting up the court. Three-point shooting when you're not shooing great is like free-throw shooting. Once one hits, everyone else does. That's what happened. They picked the game against us to bust out of their slump with the three's. They're an excellent program. They are very well coached. It's a class place here. It is an honor to be coaching at Indiana and playing in such a prestigious tournament like the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Now we have to go home and get better and get ready to play one of the best teams in America."
On having a tough turnaround after being in Maui last week...
"This is a tradition in college basketball now to have this tournament. Even though it's my first time in the Big Ten, I was home when I was at Marquette watching the games. Everybody is going to have tough turnarounds. That's not an excuse. As well as they played, we shot ourselves in the foot so many times with turnovers. I have to go back and watch the tape but I would imagine that of our 26 turnovers, probably 90 percent were unforced by not making the next pass or trying to hit a home run play, rather than trying to get a single. Those are things that we have to improve upon. We don't have a team that at any point in time we can say that we're going to ride this person or we're going to focus on these two guys to get us through the hard times. We learned that again tonight. We have to have a team effort in everything that we do."
On Malik Story playing point guard...
"He played it some on Sunday. I'm glad he got the opportunity. We made that decision coming back from Maui that we needed to get somebody else at the point to spell Verdell (Jones III) and spell Daniel (Moore). It was a big difference. We didn't handle the ball as well without Verdell in there. As we know, injuries are part of the game too. Malik will get better at that position."
On what the team can take away from tonight's game... "You can take something away from every game. Win or lose, you have to be able to take something away. The biggest lesson tonight is that they played their first road game. At halftime, we said we can't have much worse of a finish to a half. We were right in there. We were executing the game plan. We were rotating right. We were getting good shots. We were still turning the ball over some, but they were too. We were right in the game. We're not a team that can deviate from what the plan is, whether it's offensively or defensively. We'll take things away. As soon as I get on the bus, we'll watch the tape. We'll go over our notes and go over it tomorrow and get ready for Gonzaga."
On Al-Farouq Aminu...
"He's a tremendous athlete who is just scratching the surface. He's playing with confidence. I think they are doing a great job of getting those guys in there and allowing them to play serious quality minutes for being so young. We've got to hope the same thing can happen for our guys. Aminu is a very, very talented player that plays very hard."
