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Clemson vs. Arizona Postgame Coaches’ Quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Overall thoughts:“We’re certainly disappointed with the outcome after we fought so hard to get a lead in the middle of the second half.  We didn’t play well early…I don’t know if it was the moment, I don’t know if it was taking a while for our guys to adjust to the game, but when we finally got adjusted and got our legs under us, I thought we played some really good basketball for a portion.  We also had some really poor plays.  We had too many turnovers, a bunch of steals for them.  Those are just some things you can’t do against a team of that level.  They shot free throws well, had a bunch of offensive rebounds, extra possessions and finished on the break and in transition when they got numbers. I thought our guys played pretty hard. I really thought Devin Booker really competed.  I thought Book was into it early when nobody else really was.  I thought Milt (Jennings) got himself into the game and played well in spurts.  K.J. McDaniels had a little bit of a tough time in his matchup with (Solomon) Hill.  They were getting after it a little bit. We also had some poor offensive execution tonight.  We didn’t run some things the right way.  That’s disappointing to me, because we worked on a lot of things this week, I thought we’d be better in that regard.  So, all in all I thank our fans for coming out, they were terrific, gave us a big lift in the middle of the game and just disappointed that we couldn’t send them out with a better result and a better ending.”

On encouragement by good stretches of play:“We just use it (run in the middle of the game) to look at what we did, to see that when we play good basketball, we can play with a lot of teams.  But this is still a situation where we’ve played two high level teams and played reasonably well at times. But for whatever reason, we haven’t been able to finish.  I don’t know if some of that is our youth, lack of experience at the guard spot, where we have too many wasted possessions. We don’t have that go-to scorer that can settle your team down and go make something happen when you need something to happen – and that’s a problem at times.  Rod (Hall) had a poor game tonight, which surprised me in some ways. It wasn’t that he didn’t score much, but rather that he had the turnovers.  So, tonight was a myriad of problems – but there was obviously some very good play at times, too.”

On team’s youth affecting the play down the stretch:“We certainly had to grind.  Arizona does some good things.  Our field goal percentage defense was outstanding!  I think they’re 52% for the year and we held them to 35% shooting.  They’re making 10 threes a game, shooting 42% from the three.  You look at those numbers and I would’ve told you that we would’ve been in great shape.  We wanted to limit their threes and keep them off the line, and we wanted to do our best on the boards.  We didn’t do our best on the boards.  There were a lot of loose balls and extra possessions that hurt us.  I’m anxious to watch the film and see the result of that.”

Arizona Head Coach Sean Miller

Overall thoughts:“It was a very good win for our team. Unless you’ve done it, you don’t realize how difficult it is to travel across the country on a couple of days’ turnaround and play in front of a crowd like Clemson had tonight against a really quality team, especially on defense. They’ll be as physical and tough to score on, I believe, as any team we’ll play all season long. They made one great run at us. I think at one point, they were on a 34-14 run. If someone makes a 34-14 run on you and you’re on the road, that’s usually curtains. But to our team’s credit, we had a ton of resolve. We made some tough plays to stay in the game and then just seemed to get that momentum back that we had early in the game. I’m just proud of being able to do that. Sometimes, early in the year, if you can win a game shooting 35 percent, it’s more meaningful for the future than it is watching your team have one of those nights when the ball goes in. We were able to win tonight in spite of our offense.”

On the importance of offensive rebounding:“That’s one of the things we do well. We’ve done that well, really, in every game this year. If you look at our team, that’s an area where we have a lot of depth and talent, and it was in place tonight. Again, it overcame a few things. Clemson has a unique ability to block shots. Usually, there’s one player-maybe a center-that affects the game. You could see why they’re a great shot-blocking team. They block shots at a number of different positions. McDaniels is really long, deceptively long. I don’t think, until you play the game, you realize how athletically talented he is, and obviously Booker. But they had 12 blocks tonight. Some of the shots we usually make or get fouled on, they made great defensive plays. That’s one of the reasons why we had so many offensive rebounds. I think they blocked our shot and we retrieved it about five times.”

On his message to the team midway through the second half:“Just stay with it. Coming here, we didn’t think we were going to roll in and it was just going to be easy. We knew it was going to be hard. I think that was my message: This is what we’ve talked about. This is how it feels to be on the road. Let’s get back to executing, doing the things that make us a good team. Don’t let this moment become bigger because the crowd is loud or they’re on a run. Let’s get back to being who we are. That’s not the reason it happened, either, by the way. It wasn’t a great pep talk as much as that I wanted to make sure, in that timeout, that we didn’t lose our complete focus and not say, ‘Not tonight’, or, ‘Wow’. To see us not get caught up in that and continue to fight and really, from that point, we played some excellent basketball.”

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