Jan. 5, 2013
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Miami 62 – Georgia Tech 49
Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013
Georgia Tech Head Coach Brian Gregory
“Obviously I’m disappointed, but give Miami credit. They beat us. They are just better than us right now. We need to continue to improve, work at the areas we need to get better at, and just get back to work and we’ll do that on Monday.”
“Miami is just a good team. They’re big. They hurt us inside, they hurt us on the glass. Hats off to Rion Brown. He had a great game. He stepped up his game and played extremely well.”
“We had a pretty good stretch where we were doing good things offensively. The only thing I didn’t like was that when we would make some shots that weren’t good shots we would get away creating those same looks. That’s just one of those things that will come with some maturity as we continue to work and improve.”
“We just have to get back to work and continue to improve. At 10-3 right now we’ve got a tough stretch ahead. It’s a tough opening stretch of in this league. It’s a different situation this year with the 18 game ACC schedule. You’ve got two less non-conference games and we’re still not as tested as I’d like to be at this point.”
“I thought we got the ball inside pretty well. We didn’t score with it in the post as much as we have in the past and we didn’t make as many good decisions in there as much as we have in the past. As I said they’re big. You can’t really score on them from the first side so you’ve got to get it to the second and third side to score. In the first 15 minutes we were doing that and kept it close.”
“I thought the last five minutes in that first half was a big point of that game. When we had both Robert and Daniel on the Bench with foul trouble that really hurt us.”
“I like a lot of the stuff we did we just need to finish some plays on offense. The big thing is that we have to defend better and create more offensive opportunities than we did. We didn’t do as good a job of defending the dribble and the ball screen today as we need to. With our depth, our bench needs to do a better job of making a big difference for us in the game.”
“You’ve got to get two or three consecutive stops and then have a good offensive possession. You can’t have making shots be your motivating factor when you’re playing at the other end of the court. We just aren’t quite there yet to sustain it on the defensive end if things aren’t going well on the offensive side.”
Miami Head Coach
Jim Larranaga
Opening Statement
“I thought we came up here and played very good defense for 40 minutes. We got a great outcome with our defensive effort. We were very concerned because Georgia Tech is a very good defensive team and I thought we did a great job in the first half of getting a 10-point lead and having that cushion and confidence in the second half. It was a great team effort. Rion Brown was sensational. His dad played at Georgia Tech, his jersey is retired and he’s in the hall of fame. I know it was special for Rion to come here and play in front of his father and family, and play so well.”
On Miami’s inside defense…
“Kenny Kadji and Julian Gamble are veteran guys who have played against big fellows their whole life. It’s kind of the right matchup for us in terms of big guys. We’re better defending big guys than we are smaller quicker players. We’ve got a nice little rotation in the four and five when we play against big teams. In the backcourt, Shane Larkin, Durand Scott and Trey McKinney Jones have been playing very well. Rion coming in and giving us that kind of offensive performance is really a big boost to our total team effort.
Where did “Downtown Brown” come from today…
“He’s a very good shooter. We’re struggling. I think you see it in all sports. In baseball guys go through batting slumps, but they’ve actually come out of it. The great thing about Rion is it never impacted his attitude or his effort. He’s always had a great attitude and work ethic. He has continued to work. He was at this arena at 8 a.m. this morning shooting for an hour. He must have felt like he shot pretty well because he was very confident coming into the game. His teammates found him. He got a wide open three, an alley oop dunk and then found himself open a third time. Once you hit your first three you play with a great deal of confidence the rest of the way.
On Larkin’s ability to get around defenders to open up shots…
“We adjusted a little bit of our offense in the first half and McKinney Jones hit a three in the corner and Rion got another one. The biggest thing on offense is sharing the ball. I was very impressed with Georgia Tech, watching them on tape, how well their big guys got the ball inside, but kicked it out and got their perimeter players involved. We tried to do the same thing. I thought Shane and Durand really shared the ball well. The big guys did a good job of finishing inside. It worked very effectively for 37 minutes. The last three minutes we shut down a little bit and weren’t as sharp, but overall a great team effort.”
