Wednesday 03/04/2015
Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell
Opening statement:
“First of all, I would just like to say congratulations to NC State. I thought Mark (Gottfried) and his guys played pretty well tonight. I think our guys were really excited to play and compete. They were almost a little too excited I think. We had a really good turnout and a great student turnout. I think my guys were a little too amped up, to be honest with you. I thought we played great defensively for the first 20 minutes and unfortunately, we took some bad shots in the first half. We needed to have a lead and to play better. I think we guarded them about as well as you could, but offensively we made poor decisions in terms of shot selection.
“In the second half, we did not play well offensively obviously, but we really lost the game because we did not guard. As a team you have to know what your identity is. We are not going to get in a scoring contest with the better teams in the league offensively and win. That is not our nature, and not what we do. We got into our drought offensively, but really the game was lost because of poor defense in the second half.”
On Gabe DeVoe’s performance:
“I am really happy and proud of Gabe. The last month is when it has finally started to click. He really struggled in November and December. It has taken him longer than we hoped or thought, but finally the game has slowed down a little bit for him. He has strength and deep shooting ability, and those are two things that we need. It is ironic because someone said that they did not even know if he had made a shot in this building yet until tonight. He made six. He was in a situation where it is just ‘Let her fly,’ and he did. He made shots. Hopefully that just builds his confidence. Hopefully, he can be the really productive player that we recruited.”
On the scoring drought:
“It was both. I think State’s defense was good. I thought we got a little timid when we did not score for a while. I thought (BeeJay) Anya bothered us a few times and it made it a little bit harder. We never really got stops, so we never got out in transition. We never really got an easy basket or two. Sometimes you just need an easy basket or two. We just don’t shoot it very well and we never really got any of those easy ones. When that did not happen, it put more pressure on our team and we did not handle that pressure very well. We almost played like we had a piano on our back a little bit instead of confidently making plays. That is a little disappointing.”
NC State Head Coach Mark Gottfried
“Big game for us. I thought the biggest thing that stood out to me was how we defended them for most of the game. Obviously late, in the last couple of minutes, we gave up some baskets, but outside of that, for the majority of the game we really defended them well and made it difficult for them to score. Brad (Brownell) does such a good job with his team defensively it was hard for us to score. But I thought our defense won the game for us tonight.”
On playing Clemson at home in Littlejohn:
“Brad (Brownell does a great job). He’s got these guys to where it’s hard to score on them. It’s just hard. And at halftime, I felt good, we had 20, and they only had 21. But it’s (Littlejohn Coliseum) a tough place to play. Great atmosphere, their fans are great, and we’ve been able to win here a couple of times, but it’s not easy. The way they play and how they guard you makes getting baskets really difficult.”
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