Wake Forest Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Hampton
11/15/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 15, 2010
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Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
On whether today's performance is more positive than Friday's loss...
"I always have felt positive about my players and this team. I thought that we had a clunker the other day, but the sun came up. We moved on and our players learned a lot from it. They're just an extremely young group that have experienced their share of adversity here...We've never had a complete team to practice with yet this year. That makes it tough to get continuity. Travis has had to play a variety of positions. It's tough. They're going to school and everything's new to them. They gutted out a win tonight, and that's a great thing. They defended better, and we did a lot more things today in a positive way than we did the other day. Hopefully we'll do more tomorrow."
On Ty Walker...
"Ty is a young player. I think he's probably played more minutes in the last two games than he has in his first two years here. He's getting better, and I thought we were much better defensively."
On how to win with this team...
"I told them winning it is not easy. You have to find a way to win and refuse to lose. I believe in these young men. They are going to become a very special team in due time."
On the high number of turnovers...
"I think two things: number one, I'll take the blame for that. Our offense is not where it should be. Mostly, I've really been very basic with it, probably too basic from the standpoint that it's been hard with very little continuity in practice. Guys are in and out, in and out, so it's difficult. Number two, we were just careless dribbling the basketball. We tried to do too much. I actually read the players something off of ESPN when John Wall got his triple-double. Flip Saunders had him watch a tape of John Stockton before the game where Stockton would just make simple passes. Keep the game simple. Just hit open men. We just have to get away from forcing things so much."
Sophomore C.J. Harris
On forcing Hampton to change their defense...
"That's what we've worked on a lot in the past couple of days. Last game it was sticking in one or two guys' hands; we were doing a lot of dribbling. Our emphasis in this game was to move the ball as much as possible. When we got three, four or five passes, we always got a layup, a foul or a good, open jump shot. That's what we wanted to do, just move the ball better."
Freshman Travis McKie
On getting his first collegiate win...
"My first college win was good. We're a very young team; all of us are learning as we go. This win was a tough one, so it was good to get one under our belt and we're looking forward to tomorrow."
Head Coach Edward Joyner Jr.
Opening Statement...
"A tale of two halves - that's basically what it was. The first half we came out with some first-game jitters. We were anxious to get some things done. I can't be upset with the way that we played. We were 9-for-40 in the first half, and 25 of those were probably wide open shots. Out of those 25, 10 were probably layups that we missed. I thought once we got those jitters out, we could make a run. We were right where we wanted to be, we just weren't finishing plays. In the second half, we kind of gathered ourselves a little bit, and then it became about free throws. The sad part of it is that I had my three best scorers go to the free throw line and we missed three straight front ends of the one-and-one. I think we were 1-for-7 or 1-for-8 in the last two minutes, and we lost this game by seven points. I'm really not upset. I think we accomplished some of the things we wanted to accomplish without the win. If I was sitting here telling you we took 72 shots, forced 19 turnovers, we got 18 offensive rebounds and we stole the ball 12 times, and then I told you we lost, you would say `no way.'"
On trying to force the young Wake Forest players into mistakes...
"We wanted to pick up the pressure on them. We didn't feel like their guard play was suspect, but we felt like with the loss of [Tony] Chennault that a lot of them would be put into unfamiliar situations. We wanted to pick them up quick. If they had had Chennault, we probably would have changed our pressure. The thing is, we didn't get to set up our press because we didn't make shots. We feel like we probably could have forced them into more turnovers."
On junior Ty Walker's impact on the defensive end...
"In the first half, I think he was a big impact. In the second half, it was a different game. We shot 40 percent in the second half. He controlled the first half."
