University of Connecticut Athletics
Post Game Quotes
1/9/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 9, 2012
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January 9, 2012
Connecticut Head Coach Jim Calhoun
It's been a little bit of a rollercoaster ride recently….We hit a hump, as we have in the past in January, and I think we turned it around today and had an inspiring win. And that's the word I'd use for it.
I thought the [fans] that showed up were more than special. And here's how I sometimes correlate it. We're down eight, we get to six, and I thought we went ahead by four. In the past we've had crowds waiting for us to do things….The team feeds off that and, by the way we were playing, they need to feed off that, because we were turning the ball over, we weren't rebounding….We started to rebound, started to play some really good defense.
I tried to tell them that Jeremy's pretty good. We should probably try to get him a few shots. There are a few guys who felt that they had a license just to shoot the ball. You want a good player to shoot the basketball.
We did a really good job of getting 'Dre the ball inside.
I'm really proud of them. I'm proud of the way they played, and came back. And I'm proud of our fans. It was exhilarating. There's no other word for it. When you've done this a few times, as I have, there are wins and there are good wins. And that's a terrific win for us, because they're really good.
What we started to do is, if the big guy was going to beat us, just let him beat us. Secondly, we really tried to switch some of those things that we weren't switching before, so you may beat us to the rim, but you aren't going to shoot threes on us anymore. You aren't going to bury us with threes as they had in the first half. So we made a couple of adjustments there.
One thing that helped us was that we went 2-2-1 press. And we only did it about eight trips. But somehow or other, they were getting the ball then at 20. Fifteen seconds had gone by, and it helped us.
On Drummond
I thought Andre Drummond was special tonight. He hasn't been special all season - he's been good - as you would expect for a freshman. But tonight he was special. He was the difference in the game.
On Oriakhi
I thought that Alex played his best game in probably a month. There is still a lot more from him, but he was very important tonight given the fact of the physicality of their big guy.
January 9 2012
Player Quotes
We executed greatly and came out with a great win today.
We had fire in our eyes. We were like, "We're not losing this game no matter what. We're going to go out there and get this game."
On holding
They told me "you got to take the challenge and put a stop to him, get him off the boards and stop him from scoring." And I went out there and did my best. It was a great defensive game for me and my teammates.
This was a great win. We really, really needed this win. It builds our confidence a whole lot.
On getting a boost from Coach Jim Calhoun's technical foul
After [the free throws], we got a stop; we got a score. It got real loud and just pushed us through that time.
A couple of games ago [Coach] told me everybody was going to be physical [with me]. They tried to do that today but my big men really set good screens for me and got me free. I was able to get open, get some open shots and get to the rim a couple of times.
On how pressure defense sped up their game
When you play man and press, that's what we like. It definitely sped the game up. That's the type of speed we wanted. We executed our offense very well.
On crowd
We definitely fed off the crowd. Without that crowd tonight, I don't think we win. It was a pleasure.
UConn Men's Basketball v. West Virginia
West Virginia Coach Bob Huggins
January 9, 2012
Coach Bob Huggins
What happened after being up 10?
We quit running offense. Tried to make one on one plays. They took some things away from us and we didn't go to the second option. It's kind of a catch-22 thing. If I put Truck out there who understands a little bit better, I'm not getting him the shots. Also, you got two freshmen out there that just kind of panicked a little bit.
On Kevin Jones shooting threes:
That's part of what we do. Part of what we do is KJ (Kevin Jones) shoots threes.
If we would ever pass the ball. I think that's a lost art. Everyone wants to catch it and I used to have an assistant say, 'they killed ants.' There wouldn't be a damn ant alive if they had any in here. I'm telling you we would have killed them all. We just dribble it and dribble it and dribble it and dribble it and dribble it and we don't pass the ball. It hard to score when you don't pass the ball. We don't have Jeremy Lamb. We don't have guys who can create a good shot. We have guys who have to get that out of the context of the offense. And that's fine. But you have to run offense to do that.
