Feb. 19, 2007
Recap | Box Score | AP Gallery
– Georgia Tech Coach Paul Hewitt
Opening Statement — “Congratulations to Duke on their 20th win and to Coach Krzyzewski on his 700th. They played a good basketball game today. We battled back in the second half, obviously, but it was just too big of a hole in the first half to win on the road.”
On turning the ball over — “We were very timid and they were much more aggressive. If it was a fight, they would have stopped it. They were just battling and we didn’t do anything to respond.”
On the defense of Duke’s DeMarcus Nelson — “They’re a good defensive team. I was more disappointed in the first half that we did nothing … we didn’t have any type of offense. In the second half we shot 45 percent. But credit them for being more aggressive than us. We knew it was going to be the type of game that the more aggressive team would win. It was a very important game for both teams. Pardon the cliché but they wanted it more in the first half. We played better in the second half, but we were down 15 at the half on the road. I thought we made a pretty strong comeback to get it back to have a chance to get it within six, but on that 3-on-1 break, we just made a very poor decision to throw the ally-oop pass instead of just shooting the ball. But if you’re going to win games, you can’t make those mistakes. And we made those mistakes and lost.”
On how the turnovers affected the momentum of the game — “I thought we played pretty good defense out there even though we turned it over 28 times. They weren’t the type of turnovers that led to run-out baskets like they got in the first half. We had two very bad turnovers that were baseline drives that we threw back up to the top of the key, and those are very easy to pick off and turn into dunks and get some momentum. But I have to give them credit, they were much more aggressive. Like I said, if it was a fight, they would have stopped it in the first half. They absolutely battled us and we never responded.”
