March 19, 2003
Georgia Tech Coach Paul Hewitt
“As the saying goes, any win is a good win, but I thought this was a particularly good win because of the way we executed down the stretch. I thought we did a very good job of screening and establishing Chris and using Marvin to create openings. What we’re hoping to get out of this opportunity is to get more experience for Jarrett and to become a better basketball team. We want to become a smarter team, especially down the stretch of games. Ohio State is a tough, tough basketball game. When we put that run on them in the first half, I thought they might fade a little because of fatigue, but they battled back. I talked before the game about how well they screen and how precise they are in their execution. They were very strong and in the first half in particular, they pushed us around a little. In the second half we did a better job of fighting through the screens to contest their shots. Who knows, maybe the pressure wore them down a little. Down the stretch the thing I was most happy about was our execution.
“Obviously I’ve got to mention Theodis Tarver. He stepped up and played a very nice basketball game tonight. He was active. The thing I’ve been on him about and the reason that he didn’t play much early in the year is because he would turn the ball over a lot. I think this might be his fourth game in a row without a turnover. He’s playing stronger with the basketball, he’s blocking shots, and he’s starting to show some of the ability we saw when we recruited him.
“The thing that has been most impressive to me about Chris is that he’s such an intelligent player. When people have made adjustments to slow him down, he’s always had an answer. When people front him, he’s sealing and catching high-low passes, or he steps out on the perimeter and his ability to shoot the ball makes him a tough guy to cover. He shoots the ball very well and he takes good shots. Good shooters don’t make tough shots; good shooters take good shots and knock them down.
“I thought tonight was the best we’ve executed in the last five to eight minutes of a game. There was a point where Ed got the ball in the high post and made a nice high-low pass to Chris. There was a similar situation in the NC State game. I turned to my guys on the bench and said that was the pass we missed against NC State and it cost us any easy basket in a crucial situation. They’re learning. I compare to the group I was with at Villanova in 1994 with Kerry Kittles as a sophomore and Alvin Williams and Jason Lawson as freshmen. They used the NIT to really springboard the following year.
Ohio State Coach Jim O’Brien
“I thought our kids played very, very hard. We just ran out of gas. We just didn’t have enough. That team was very, very athletic and they just wore us down. We had a really good effort, and with about 8 or 9 minutes to go we were still in the hunt. Brent got a cramp and had to come out for a while and foul trouble hurt us. We just lost to a better team tonight.”
On Radinovic’s foul trouble:
“It really hurt us. We told him that we needed him to stay in the game and play 35 minutes at least, but we just couldn’t get to that point. They just kept going inside and they he has a tendency to foul and he takes himself out of the game when he does that so it really hurts us when he goes out of the game.”
On Tech’s pressure:
“I thought that we handled the pressure pretty well but sometimes the pressure is effective not only if you make steals but if you get the tempo going, and quite honestly, I didn’t like the tempo of the game. I thought the game was going way too fast for us in the first half and it really took its toll on us in the second half and I think that’s all part of the plan – if you don’t have enough guys. Early on, maybe a couple of mistakes with the pressure, but I didn’t think turnovers hurt us, but more the entire pace of the game. 35 points for us in a half is way too many points for us and it means the game is probably going a little too fast for us.”
On the play of the freshman and seniors tonight:
“Hopefully our young guys will learn from this experience and some of the experiences that they’ve gotten this year and it will help us next year. I thanked both Connolly and Darby after the game. They’ve both had very nice careers and I’m proud of everything that they’ve done for us and there is no question we are going to miss both of them.”
