Clemson vs. The Citadel Postgame Coaches’ Quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad BrownellOverall thoughts:“I thought it was a really good game for us offensively. I don’t know that defensively we were as good as we needed to be at times. We didn’t play as sound defensively as I would have liked, but moving in to conference play it was good to see us shoot the ball well and have a convincing win and a good offensive performance. We are better than the last two teams we have played, and you need to exploit that. In a game with as many possessions as we had, and as many defenses as they showed us, we did well to only have eight turnovers. We shared the ball well and had a lot of advantage situations and didn’t get in too big of a hurry. We had a reasonably good mix, though I would have liked a little more inside scoring at times. We got away from that a little in the first half. Overall, a pretty good performance by our guys.”On Adonis Filer‘s performance:“It was good to see Adonis make four threes today. They played off of him, gave him open shots and he made them. We have had other games where that has happened and we haven’t made them. Other than him just knocking down the open shots, I really liked his energy and spark defensively. I thought he really got after the ball handler and pressured and got our defense going a little bit. I think his greatest strength right now is his competitive spirit. He wants to play, he wants to compete, and he’s not afraid. It’s a huge help to our team when he can make shots like that. He is a little streaky right now as a shooter, but we need him to have some games like this if we are going to beat some good teams in our league.”On the up-tempo offense: “You might see it a little bit more, but not as drastic. We are trying to play faster on offense, but to be honest with you, sometimes the players don’t like to play fast, because they get tired. In games when we feel we have better players we do like to speed the game up a little bit. We like it, especially at home, but I’m not sure we will do it a lot in ACC play. When you play better competition with better guards they make you press at times so you have to be careful with that.”On the youth of the team:“There are a few more frustrating moments than years before because you feel like you get some things going in a good direction and then you either see something new that you haven’t practiced as much and it shows or, because you have newer and younger guys who aren’t as experienced with it there are things you think they should have mastered but they haven’t because you are constantly game planning for another game or another situation. The Citadel Head Coach Chuck DriesellOverall thoughts:“I was disappointed. I thought we’d handle the pressure a little bit better. I thought we would execute offensively and not turn the ball over so much. I thought they played hard and got after it. They just looked a little tentative and a little overwhelmed at times, and you can’t play that way.”On any takeaways from a difficult stretch of games:“It’s not just this game. It’s the last several that we’ve had like this. We’ve played some teams that are bigger than we are, stronger, faster, more athletic. We’ve got to learn to take care of the basketball. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing. We’ve been turning the ball over at a rate that’s way too high. We’re not going to shoot a good percentage and we’re not going to hold the other team to a decent percentage if we’re giving up 44 points off of turnovers. This is not the first game that’s been the case. It’s a big Achilles heel of ours right now, and that’s something that our guys have seen. They understand how important it is that they need to fix that in order for us to have a chance to win.”