University of Connecticut Athletics
UCONN-COPPIN ST. POSTGAME QUOTES
11/13/2021 4:22:00 PM | Men's Basketball
UConn Coach Dan Hurley
On what he was happy with throughout the game:
"Happy with some things, obviously not happy with the start. Thrilled with what the bench guys did in particular. Love the way Jaylen and Akok are embracing their roles right now coming off the bench for us. I don't think we necessarily played strong across the board from our top right. But, you know, effectively going into a game, with Jordan out right now and obviously Rahsool and Samson and Richie - those guys trying to fight their way into a rotation. We got eight starters, a couple of those eight starters didn't play particularly well tonight. But, you know, when you have a deep team and you have that type of quality, you look to your top eight to still do relatively well."
On Jalen Gaffney's improvements and performance:
"Jalen's been outstanding. And it could have went another way because of the decision we made with how we wanted to start the game. And again, you know, it's the coaching staff, our mentality was too engage. It's about bleeding blue and it's all about the front of the jersey and what the team needs and at this point what this team needs is for Jalen to come off the bench and be that aggressive and that assertive. He needs to feel free for him to have that green light to cut through the lane and to just attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. And that seems to be working."
On the ball movement:
"It was good. I think you'll see that we want to be a team that averages 16, 17, 18 assists a game. Probably could have been 30 today, you know, we bricked some shots. We missed some quick play things we normally wouldn't miss. We screwed up some fast break opportunities. But, I thought we probably could have had 30 assists today. We did take a couple of bad threes."
On the rotation between the eight starters and their minutes:
"Well I'm thinking about that, that's why you know we try to get Andre and R.J. at 26 [minutes], we wanted guys to try to get as close to like 25-26 in this game as we could. Obviously we can't have those guys out there when the score had gotten where it got to. We are going to need some of these guys playing 30 plus minutes."
COPPIN STATE COACH JUAN DIXON
Overall review of today's performance:
"We fought against a very good team. We're on a long four game road trip, this game being the second of a back-to-back. We were very fatigued but we went out and competed very hard. As a staff, we will continue to get better and be better overall. We have to earn some guaranteed money through these games and we are going to keep fighting."
UCONN PLAYERS
How is it embracing your new role
"A lot of emphasis, bringing everyone back, everyone is getting better. Losing Bouk (James Bouknight), loisng a great scorer everyone had to get better. I worked on my game in the spring summer and now we're here. That's my role. To bring energy off the bench and attack. Get people open for shots and play freely and play my game."
On having 8 assists
"Their defense was weird, but guys were making shots. I was finding them open and feeding them the ball and they we're hitting shots. So I'm grateful for my teammates knocking down shots.
What was the spark that started the 14-0 run
"We just got stops. They came out and the ball was going in for them, and their defense was confusing us a little. But then we got the ball to Adama and we started scoring."
Another 20 point game, how is your game developing?
"I'm not going to say it's easy to score. There was sometimes I was supposed to kick it out, but I didn't so I have to do better doing that. It wasn't easy to score but, it was easy to score as Jalen said."
