Postgame Quotes - The Duke Game
1/28/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 28, 2009
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Wake Forest Head Coach Dino Gaudio
On the victory...
"I just thought it was a great basketball game. I just thought it was a terrific game with two teams that played very, very hard. And we just had the ball the last possession and were able to score, that's all. We were very fortunate to win. When you compete against those guys, they're incredibly well coached and they play very, very hard. Good college basketball game, good win for our kids. I'm very proud of them."
On the defense and preparation for the game...
"I thought our defense was really good. I think someone said to me that this was their lowest field goal percentage of the year for them. I thought we did a good job of guarding the three-point line, which we did. A couple times, [Kyle] Singler got away from us. [I'm] really happy for our kids. They worked hard four practice days. After the Virginia Tech game, the next day we had a little bit of a knock-down, drag-out film session. We didn't practice but we watched film. On Friday and Saturday we didn't do anything but work on our fundamentals. Then we gave them off Sunday. Then Monday and Tuesday we prepared for Duke, but good win. Every game in this league is like 'Game Seven'."
On overcoming the loss to Virginia Tech...
"I think they went back to work. This group all year has been a tough, hard-nosed basketball team, and we showed it initially winning the 76 Tournament in Anaheim, Calif., [going to] BYU and winning, and then the week we had prior to Virginia Tech. I told the kids, 'You know what, we had 16 very good games. We had one bad one. We're not going to lose our minds over that. We just got to go back to work, just keep getting better, it's a long season.' And they did. They did a great job of working."
Wake Forest Players
Sophomore James Johnson
On the last play...
"Coach called timeout and drew it up. We had never run it before. We knew everybody was going to key on Jeff Teague. He's the man. He's the one who scores and puts buckets up for us so he said watch out for the slip. I slipped it and L.D. [Williams] made a great pass - it was perfect - and I finished the play. I thank my team and my coach."
On beating top-ranked Duke...
"They're a great team. They play hard and they don't ever quit or stop. I just feel like we could have played better towards the end of the stretch and have gotten a couple more stops. And it started with me, so I'm going to work on that, and I'm going to apologize to my team."
Sophomore Jeff Teague
On Duke making it close at the end...
"They came down and made some big shots and big plays. Gerald Henderson was playing really well in the second half. He hit that clutch jumper to tie it up. [But] I had confidence in our team that we were going to do something. I knew we were going to win this game tonight, I had confidence in our team."
On the possibility of going into overtime...
"I would have been disappointed if we would have gone into overtime. We had the lead with 13, and going into overtime with Duke is going to be tough because they're a really good team."
Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening Statement...
"I want to congratulate Wake. This was a heck of a game. It was tough to score for both teams tonight. That's why a couple of the run outs that we gave them that led to points were key. I didn't think that we had the aggressiveness or toughness that we showed for most of the season and then all of a sudden we had so much of it, it was unbelievable. Our kids played so hard to put themselves in a position to win. We were horrible in defending the last play. The effort to come back was outstanding. (David) McClure really came up with a heck of an effort tonight. Our guy made a lot of tough shots. There was a period there where we thought we were going to get blown out of here. We had some foul trouble and we weren't hitting anything and it's just not a great night for us. All of a sudden, the group of kids that we had in there turned things around. Congratulations to them. I thought we did a good job on the boards. Kyle (Singler) and Gerald (Henderson) turned it over a few times, but I think some of those were just them trying to do something. It was a heck of a game for us to play in and obviously, we would have loved to won it. Losing the game on the last play makes it hard a little bit more. Sometimes getting hurt is good."
On what makes it tough to play against Wake Forest...
"They're good. Good teams are tougher to play against than medium or bad teams. They're very good and they're deep. They can handle the ball. They have good athleticism. They're a big time team."
On what Duke was able to do well down the stretch...
"I thought our guys drove more aggressively and we hit some shots. We're still not shooting the way I hope we'll be able to shoot. I thought there was a fierce determination on the part of that group of kids. That was neat to see. You can't practice that. It appears that it's not going to be your night and through effort and determination you almost make it your night and one play knocks you back. That's one of the tough things about sport. The fact that we had that type of determination shows that we have good heart on the team."
On what he said to his team before the last play...
"We were going to switch everything, but you have to body up. We didn't body up, obviously. We wanted the ball to go to the outside, so you'd switch to take the inside away. We didn't do it. You need to be very physical on that play just because the nature of the game on that play, people who are administering the game are going to allow more physicality. If they were going to do anything, we wanted them to make a jump shot. We were not physical on that play. We deserve to lose if you don't do that.
On Jeff Teague and Ish Smith...
"Ish Smith is good. He's really good. We just tried to have a lot more awareness for Teague. In saying that, all of that awareness opens it up for some other guys. Even if he doesn't score, he creates space for his teammates to score. That's what a great player does. We played well enough in the last 10 minutes to win. I don't think we played well enough over the 40 minutes to win."
