Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Iowa
11/30/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 30, 2010
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Wake Forest Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
Opening Statement...
"I'm really happy for our young players. I thought that they fought, they grew, and they found a way. Good for them. Obviously, there's always something to work on, and we have a lot to work on, but those kinds of qualities are a great place to start."
On the significance of the win...
"It's one thing as a coaching staff to breathe confidence in them on a daily basis and stay positive, but it's another thing to actually feel it after a ball game. That's why a win like this was so vital to these young players who have really suffered a lot of challenges up to this point. We've lost three players, so they've battled and going through final exam preparation. They didn't get off to a great start, but they found a way, they battled back, and there's a great spirit in these young players. We just need to keep working and keep battling, and they did that. I'm so proud of them."
On the closing moments of the game...
"I told them that you're better off in the open court when the defense is not set up, and go make a play. I have great confidence in them, and C.J. had the ball and he found the right guy (J.T. Terrell), and he made the shot."
On the first half...
"We just need to keep playing. Obviously, why we got off to such a horrific start is beyond me. We did have several great days of practice. I just think they're young, and they just need a win like this to give them a boost of confidence. I'm really proud of them. I thought early on we just threw the ball carelessly around, and then when we fell behind we abandoned our discipline offensively and defensively, but we were able to get back on track and make a little bit of a mini-run that kept us within striking distance."
On the play of J.T. Terrell...
"He hit a hot streak. He's a consistent shooter, both him and Ari (Stewart). We just need to do a better job of running our offense so we get clean, open looks. I had a talk with J.T. today about being fearless. I talked to the whole team about being fearless. You have to play that way. We have some special young players that have gone through some tough challenges here early on, and I believe in them. I think J.T. showed what kind of player he truly is today."
On the turning point of the game...
"It's kind of like our season in that it's up, down, and all around thus far. I just thought we started locking in better, forcing them to take some contested shots, and then we were able to grab some defensive rebounds and get out and get some easy baskets in transition. That's what we want to do, but in order to do that we need to get stops and grab defensive rebounds, which we weren't doing in the first half."
Iowa Head Coach Fran McCaffery
Opening statement...
"This was obviously a very unique game. We played extremely well in the first half, with the exception of the last 30 seconds. That I think affected us a little bit, and then we had the stretch in the second half where it seemed like we just couldn't make a shot and they got comfortable. It's the kind of thing that happens on the road. We knew it would be different; this is our first legitimate road game. We felt like maintaining our composure early was going to be critical, and we did, but we lost our composure a little bit for that stretch where we couldn't get a basket, we couldn't get a second shot, we couldn't stop Terrell. We gave them the space that they needed to get comfortable again with their offense. All in all, I'm proud of our effort and proud of the way that we came back. I have a lot of respect for Jeff (Bzdelik), the kind of coach that he is, and the players that are here. They're young, they're talented and they were able to come back."
On what Wake Forest did defensively in the second half...
"We had some really good looks in that stretch, I thought. We had good players with good looks, and we got a little tight. Was the pressure more intense? Absolutely. And they didn't give us second chances in that time. When you're struggling, you need someone to get one and put it back in for you, and we just didn't get any of that. It seemed like it was going to get completely away from us - so far that we weren't going to have any time to get back - and we had some time. So we changed our offense, our offense wasn't working. So we made some changes. We changed the lineup, we had a lineup that was clicking offensively. I think the thing from our side that's upsetting is that when they were playing better defense on us, we weren't playing the kind of defense that gave us the lead. That's what you have to be able to do, especially on the road. When they start cooking a little bit, we had a tendency to stop shooting the ball. We talk about that all the time. When you're on the road and the team is on a run, you cannot stop shooting the ball. That's inexperience, so hopefully we'll learn from that."
On how a lack of composure affected Iowa's defense...
"We were just soft. We weren't getting up toward the ball. We were content to just kind of hope that they missed. If you're playing a team with the type of players that they have, you have to make them miss, and we didn't do that. We'd done that in the first half. That's the thing, we were capable of doing that, we did it later. But in that stretch, we were kind of content to lay back. If you looked at where our players were positioned, they weren't up toward the ball. There was no ball pressure. We didn't rotate on ball screens after they made a pass. All of the stuff we had done in the first half, we weren't doing. A little bit of that could have been fatigue, but it was a little bit of getting sideways when the other team is playing better."