Saturday 12/19/2015
Opening statement:
“It was a game of runs, but obviously their run of six or seven minutes in the first half when we played poorly was the difference in the game. Our guys fought back, we did a lot of good things in the second half that gave us a chance to win, and cut it to four with four minutes to play and had plenty of opportunities. We consistently got stops and had a chance, but nobody could make the big play at the end to win a game like this.”
On the game’s biggest factor:
“Credit them for making shots, that is the area where they have improved the most. Our team right now is a little too emotional, we aren’t as steady and become unnerved too easy. Our highs are high and are lows are too low and good teams don’t do that, they are more even keel. They will get up when things go good, but when things don’t go as well they aren’t going to get as low, so we are just a little too emotional that way. We have had several games where we have lulls and we can’t get out of it. The last four minutes of the first half were important, our guys played better and we finally got our wits about us again. So we went into halftime fine and regrouped and came out in the second half and played fine. We told our guys, get to the eight-minute mark with a chance to win, and we certainly did that.”
On if fatigue was a factor late in the game:
“For neither team, not just us, neither team scored a lot late. We might have run out of gas a little bit, but at the end of the day we had some shots that were good shots, that you have to make. We missed some free throws, we missed a lot of free throws during that stretch of getting down 20. I know two, maybe three front ends of one-and-ones. It felt like we were on 18 points forever. South Carolina is a good team, they are big and strong and it is hard to score inside on them. They front everything, and if guys get open they aren’t open for long. Because their guards are so big, there is enough pressure on the ball that the guys can’t see. They force you to drive it and make plays off the drive, or you are going to have some threes and you have to shoot the ball well. Our team is a better three-point shooting team this year, but 8-for-26 isn’t going to get it done. We needed 10 in a game like this or we needed to be 8-for-22 or something similar. We had too many misses, and the rebounding hurt us in the first half. That is going to happen against them because they are so aggressive that they are probably going to beat you on the boards, it just can’t be by as much. We had 10 turnovers, that was an issue coming into the game, worrying about that. But we handled the ball well, ran enough good things to be fine offensively. But 23-for-63 (shooting), is just not enough makes.”
Opening statement:“Good win for our guys. To go on the road and play a real good basketball team that’s extremely disciplined and experienced, and to feel the lead and then see it kind of fall apart and then figure out a way to hold on for dear life and depend on our defense and some free throws, that says something. We didn’t score a lot in the second half. We stood around a little too much, like Sindarius (Thornwell) said. But our bigs just didn’t give us a presence at the rim tonight. Mindaugas (Kacinas) started off well. Give them credit. (Landry) Nnoko protects that rim. We were trying to attack the rim, but he just wasn’t giving us the rim. Give him credit now. Sometimes we tend to blame the people that don’t make the positive play, but the guy on the other side is pretty good, too. So give them credit.”
On second-half offensive problems:
“We had to go to a smaller lineup. We were trying to get deeper on the clock. We still couldn’t execute something that we’d been running for four years at the end of the clock, and that’s disappointing, but it’s alright. We didn’t fall apart. We figured out a way to get deep on the clock. I thought we took one bad shot coming down the stretch, and that was a three by Sindarius [Thornwell]. You can’t take that shot. He knows that. I’m not trying to kick him. He looked at me as soon as he shot it and said, ‘My bad.’ When the other team’s on a run, that’s not the time to do that, but it is what it is. We buckled in defensively and got some stops. Defensive rebounding continues to be a problem for us now. We’ve got to clean that up. We’ll end up getting beat because of that.”
On the first true road game:
“The last two days in practice, the guys were phenomenal. Disciplined. Their spirit. Their execution. Defensively I thought they were phenomenal, not good, phenomenal in practice, and we went out there and played that way in the first half. I thought defensively we were real good. And then the last two minutes of the half we gave them life. We stopped playing intelligently and aggressively, and gave them life. You can’t go on the road and give a good team life. And that’s what we did. I knew it at halftime that we were gonna come out in the second half and be in a fist fight, and that’s exactly what we got ourselves into. But still, if you go on the road and win, you do cartwheels on the highway on the way home. If you can figure out a way to win at Clemson’s building, technically I guess that’s what this is this year, you’ve got to take it and be excited about it.”
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