Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Nicholls
11/24/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Wake Forest Head Coach Danny Manning
Opening Statement...
"Tonight was a game where we came out and I thought defensively in the first half, we guarded fairly well. I still think we can do a much better job in terms of the shots that they did get. I thought they got too many shots at point-blank range. They ran their offense very well but we have to do a better job of guarding. We came out in the second half and I did not like the energy that was out there so I went with a whole lineup change. Those guys came in and gave us life and a little more balance. Nicholls is a team that is going to travel everywhere to compete. Their coach does a good job and they are going to be pretty tough in their conference this year and they have some really talented players."
On the play of freshmen Mitchell Wilbekin and Cornelius Hudson...
"Mitch is really starting to find his stride. Any time that you go from high school to ACC-caliber basketball there is an adjustment period. I think his adjustment period was probably a little bit shorter than most because he has been around his brother. He is starting to understand it and he does give us a chance to stretch the floor out a little bit. Cornelius played well also. He has some abilities to go and make some tough plays and make them look easy from time to time. We are really pleased with those guys so far and they have to continue to work on getting better, but tonight was a good outing."
On the game Wednesday against Mount St. Mary's...
"Mount St. Mary's is a talented team that has some good size on them and some good guards. Historically, they have always been a solid team. We have to come out and be ready to play from the start. Regardless of who we are playing we have to go out and do what we do and what we practice on every single day. We have to get better at that and put together good sequences. To me a great sequence is a series of good plays and not just a homerun play. I think far too many times we try to make a homerun play."
Wake Forest Forward Darius Leonard
On the starters being pulled at the beginning of the second half...
"If you don't do your job, you're coming out. It's as simple as that. He gave us an assignment and if you don't do your assignment, coach will not play you."
On Mitchell Wilbekin's shooting...
"He's a great shooter, that's what coach brought him here to do. When he catches the ball we tell him to shoot it, and we have confidence that it's going to go in. He's always in the gym practicing, so I always think his shots are going in as soon as he releases it."
On the coaches teaching lessons while being up 30 points...
"It was different, but I'm used to it. I've seen both sides of the spectrum from my freshman year until now -- being up 30 points and being down 30 points. Coach wanted to use this as a teaching lesson, that regardless what we're up against we still have to play his style of basketball, keep competing, and play as hard as we can."
Nicholls Head Coach J.P. Piper
Opening statement...
"We had a game plan in the first half that we did not follow very well, and the game got away from us. We did a better job in the second half. I don't know that our team is ready to beat that team, but we didn't give ourselves a chance in the first half. We knew that they were good in transition, and we gave them too many opportunities in transition. So in essence we allowed them to play to their strength which they did very, very well in the first half. I thought we responded well in the second half as far as following our game plan, but when you spot them a 27, 30 point lead, it really doesn't matter at that point. Hopefully we'll learn something."
On how Wake Forest was able to stop them defensively...
"I thought they did a couple of things that we should have been prepared for. They pressured the wings and tried to deny the reversal, which is not something we haven't seen. I felt like we were too willing to get out of our offense. What we're trying to learn as a group is to beat a more talented team, you've got to use our system. We abandoned our system in the first half, and Wake exploited that. It's got to be harder to break us out of our offense than just getting in the passing lane on the wing and saying `okay, you got us - we're not going to run offense, we're just going to freelance,' which is what we did. Credit them. Sometimes they switched, and sometimes they played it straight, so it kept us a little on edge which I thought was a smart move on their part, but it shouldn't cause us to abandon what we do. We did a much better job - you would have enjoyed the halftime talk - we ran our offense in the second half, and I know again, that was not their first line, but we were able to play it to a 28-all, and if we hadn't have given up two buckets to the walk-ons late, we would have won the second half. Little better job sticking to the game plan, despite the same adjustments that they made in the second half, we executed offensively."
On Wake Forest's blocked shots....
"We play murderer's row every year. I tell our guys, the first thrust or first punch to the rim is not going to generate offense. It's going to turn into a blocked shot. We want to shrink it, expand it, shrink it, expand it - for some reason they weren't convinced that those guys were going to block shots, but obviously they're very capable. We had a lot of two-dribble, leave the floor, float to rim, and that's just serving it up. It's like a volleyball game for them. We were better in the second half at looking to punch it in there and looking to make an extra pass around the goal. In fact sometimes we looked too much extra passing, but I would rather that right now until we sort it out. In our league, we're not going to see that much athleticism. There might be one guy like that on the floor, not two or three at a time."
