Wake Forest vs. Clemson - Postgame Quotes
12/31/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Wake Forest Head Coach Danny Manning
Opening statement…
"I'm going to give Clemson credit. They made some plays down the stretch to put themselves in a situation to win the ball game. We did some good things in the first half to go into halftime with a five point lead. We came out in the second half and had a lead of about 13 points. There were some momentum swinging plays in the second half that gave them some light, juice, and energy. Brad's teams continue to fight and battle, and they did that. All games that you lose are a hard pill to swallow. We were in command of this game for almost 36 minutes and we weren't able to close it out."
On John Collins being limited in the last 10 minutes…
"Our offense doesn't change. We just weren't able to get him the ball. Give them credit for pressuring our guards and taking away some vision. We still have to be able to move the basketball a lot better than we did down the stretch."
On looking ahead…
"We will continue to practice the way we've been practicing. The one thing we have to continue to do is to give ourselves a chance to win ball games. We've done that in every game that we've played. We just have to cut back on the stretches where we're not playing such good basketball."
Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell
Opening statement…
"I feel very fortunate to win tonight. I thought Wake Forest played really well until the last few minutes. I give our guys credit. We kept playing. We didn't play as well today as we've been playing in some parts of the game, but I think Wake was a part of that. John Collins was a problem for us. He is a terrific talent. They did a great job of exploiting that. Our big guys were in foul trouble, and Wake has a bunch of shooters. You're always worried about defending the three. Combine that with a talented post player and it's a tough cover."
On taking Collins out of the game at the end…
"We tried to do it for most of the game we just didn't do a good job. I thought we kept hanging in there. We didn't stop him much, but we stopped him late which was the difference."
On making the comeback…
"It felt like it was worse than it was. We were only down six, eight, or four the whole game. We were just down. We could never catch up. the mountain probably felt bigger than it was. We just had to keep playing until finally they had their spurt and got a little of a lead."
