Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest 90, Virginia Tech 79
3/10/2013 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 10, 2013
Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
Opening statement...
"A heart-felt special thank you to our fans. A Spring Break crowd on a Sunday afternoon like this is just awesome and is very inspirational to our players, our staff, everyone associated with Wake Forest. I want to thank our fans - they were awesome. Our players really responded well with their effort today. (We had) 21 assists on 29 baskets - it was a great team effort, great will to win. I'm really proud of our effort, really proud of our team play. I'm really proud of our seniors, C.J. (Harris), Spencer Jennings, Will Murphy, our managers Blake, Mike and Scott. I'm just really, really proud of them."
On the game plan for defending Erick Green...
"Well we knew that he'd get his points. He's just a great player. We wanted to make sure that others did not have all-star nights. The first time we played them, we trapped the pick-and-rolls, and that's really hard to do for anybody, especially for a young team, but we did a good job at Virginia Tech and put ourselves in position to win. But I just thought we'd make a little adjustment today and just really show hard and try to sit down and guard them and do the best we can and offer help off certain people. But we really did a great job offensively and got off to a great start. I thought Arnaud (Adala Moto) was really good in the beginning. The first play was designed for him to catch it at the elbow and drive it hard, and I thought that set the mentality for our team early on. We drew fouls and got to the line and it was good."
On Wake Forest's key players having big games...
"When we're operating on all cylinders, we can play with anybody in the country. But we've had some moments, and a lot of that is youth. I'm not going to use that as an excuse, but I think if you compare our freshmen to other freshmen around the country, and especially with the amount of freshmen that we do have, our freshmen are playing a lot of minutes. They have to contribute and we need them. It was a great team effort. Good offense is based on good spacing and ball and player movement. In order to have that happen, everybody has to be efficient and be able to score the basketball. When that happens, it puts a lot of pressure on the defense. When they don't, it puts a lot of pressure on one or two our players, the defense starts loading up and it doesn't go so well."
Senior guard C.J. Harris
Virginia Tech Head Coach James Johnson
Opening statement...
"Give Wake Forest a lot of credit. They came out ready to play. They did a great job getting our big guys in foul trouble. They took a couple of our guys out of the game early - we're small - and we never were able to dig ourselves out of the hole.
On whether he plans to get most of the team's points from perimeter...
"No, that's just the way that it's working out. The last two teams, Duke and then Wake, they came out, and they're attacking our big guys. They know how much Cadarian Raines and C.J. Barksdale mean to us. Duke came out and ran and picked up quick fouls on Raines, and then Wake picked up the blueprint. I'm sure they watched the tape and they saw that. They went right at them, picked up fouls on them and took them out of the game. Then we had no presence to go inside."
On Wake Forest being able to break through the Virginia Tech press...
"They were ready for it. When you come out and you're not ready to play aggressive and moving, you have to be on your toes in the press. One, we were behind trying to get ourselves going, maybe get a steal and get an easy basket and force us to play hard, but we weren't ready to press. We weren't ready to play. And I have to give (Wake Forest) credit. They did a good job attacking us on the offensive end and picked up a couple of early fouls on us that took us out of the game even more. And then I think we turned it over three or four out of our first four possessions - that's not good."
