Post-Game Quotes

Jan. 31, 2004

North Carolina Head Coach Roy Williams

“Congratulations to Clemson. I’ve tried to follow Oliver and his team a little bit. I think I saw one quote that they’d like to have a game where they’d make some more jump shots. I think they did that today. We would’ve liked to taken a couple of those and put them in some other games, though. You’ve got to congratulate them.

“Early in the first half, I didn’t think we were into it as much as we needed to be. One time, we had them guarded for 35 seconds and Babalola jumps up and makes a three as the shot clock is expiring. We kind of feel like when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. But we can’t use that as an excuse. We’re the remedy for everybody’s shooting woes right now. It’s not a good feeling, but we can’t use it as an excuse. Clemson made some big-time shots tonight.

“In the first, we didn’t do a good job defensively getting around the post player. They kept throwing it inside on us. When they did come out with it to shoot threes, they were 4-5 in the half. Then they made 7-8 in the second half. Congratulations to them. We’ve got to figure out a way to guard the basketball better, the three-point line, do everything better. We’ve just got to figure out a way to play basketball.

“We didn’t want Clemson to shoot threes. Coming in, we knew they were a good rebounding team and good defensive team. The law of averages said they would make 23 percent from the three-point line. We wanted every shot they took to go over our hand. To say the least, we didn’t feel like they would shoot the way they did.”

Clemson Head Coach Oliver Purnell “Defense has been real consistent for us, so today wasn’t atypical. Obviously, making shots like that was. Sooner or later you’re going to have a night like that.

It was a huge win for us for a lot of reasons. We have been close and closer and needed a breakthrough win. We talked about today being a statement game because we’re at the halfway point (of the ACC season). It’s not how you start but how you finish. I believe this can be a springboard for us playing better. We have a tough overall schedule. If it doesn’t break you, it generally helps you toward the end.

Shawan was huge from three and versus their pressure, we talked about making them pay. If you don’t make them pay for pressing, it’s a long night.

We’ve been saying all year long, ‘you guys don’t have to wait for this program to grow to win some games.’ We just need to play better, put ourselves in position to win a little more often and win a little more often.

I thought Chris Hobbs was terrific. I thought we were going to have to double down on May early, but Hobbs kinda waived us off and stopped him a couple of times in there. If you can neutralize a guy like that, that is huge.”

Shawan Robinson “I had a lot of open looks and thankfully they went down and we got this win. A lot of the shots came from kicking it in to Chris Hobbs and Sharrod Ford passing it back out. That made things a lot easier.

I guess starting helps me get into the flow a little bit earlier in the game and for a shooter, that’s what shooting is all about.”