Jan. 9, 2010
– GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Paul Hewitt
Opening Statement:
“It’s a great bounce back win for our players. They put a lot into [the Georgia] game and they were really disappointed. But, they bounced back with their energy. They played with a lot of energy the entire game and got us a “W” to get us back to 1-1 in the league.”
On Gani Lawal:
“Gani Lawal has done an unbelievable job being a great leader for these guys. He gets them fired up before the games. You see him get 21 points and nine rebounds, but he does a lot behind the scenes to get these guys pumped up. I give him a lot of credit for the energy level the guys played with today.”
On if the style of play Georgia Tech showed in the win will be the style the Yellow Jackets will show the rest of the year:
“I hope so. Some of it has been a lack of execution and concentration on our part. Some of it has been my judgment. Again, the judgment [against Georgia] on my part was not very good. You’re not going to be able to go out every night and do it like we did today. There were still some easy baskets we gave up, but today it was good enough for a four point win.”
On if the team needed this win to reassure their current ranking:
“I think they know how much they can do. But, it’s a great confidence boost to get a win like this because everyone is going to be patting them on the back and tellimg them how great they are. But, I reminded Gani [Lawal] in the locker room that once you drop one that you quote “aren’t supposed to drop” they’re going to disappear again. This team has a high ceiling. I feel good about what we’re accomplishing, but again attending to details is going to be really important for this basketball team.”
On how the team rebounded so well after losing to Georgia on Tuesday:
“It’s sports. That’s just the way it is. If I had to say why we lost that game, I would say is that we didn’t press as much as we should have. I don’t want to take anything away from Georgia players. They did what they were supposed to do, but I felt that there were some certain things we should’ve done. I felt after the game that I let our guys down.”
On the Georgia Tech’s success guarding Kyle Singler:
“He’s a great player. I think he just had an off day. We were contesting shots, but he had an off-day.”
DUKE HEAD COACH MIKE KRZYZEWSKI
Opening Statement
“This was an ACC game. Very physical, both teams played extremely hard, shots were tough to come by, and I thought Paul’s game plan was a good one. For us, it’s not an excuse but we tried to have a little less practice time in the last two days because we had three games in six days. For them, he used the bench and they came after us and tried to wear us down. I don’t know if they wore us down, but they got us out of rhythm. We can’t only rely on [Jon] Scheyer to score. It set up for us to score from other places, and we didn’t score from other places. I thought our bigs did some good things today. [Gani] Lawal is really playing outstanding basketball right now. He gives them such a good presence. Their three bigs can match up with any three bigs in the country. There is [Zachery] Peacock, who is accepting his role and coming off of the bench and being that senior who can put the ball in the hole, make tough plays, and gives confidence to their young perimeter. [Mfon] Udofia played like a veteran today. He was excellent. I thought they played better than we did. I thought we played hard, we didn’t play as well as we would like, but I think Georgia Tech had the most to do with that. We came ready to play, and they beat us. Paul did a good job with his kids.”
On Kyle Singler’s Struggles
“We will try to figure it out. I am not blaming Singler. We win and we lose together. We obviously didn’t have the game that we need from Singler. I thought he had some really open looks that were there, and sometimes you don’t hit. They played forty minutes, and so there was never a letup by them. I thought we tried to play forty minutes too. Kyle just didn’t have the game that we would like him to have. He had the game that Georgia Tech would like him to have.”
On Team’s Defense
“I thought overall we defended fairly well. I think the big thing was that once the ball went up on the glass, they got more [rebounds] than we got. The offensive rebounding I think is strength of theirs. They had 13 offensive rebounds, but some of them were just very critical offensive rebounds.”
On Georgia Tech’s Rebounding
“That is one of the things they do, and you have to try to neutralize that for a forty minute period. I thought that in first half we did a much better job than we did in the second half. “
On Problems with Facing Georgia Tech
“They are a very talented basketball team, and deep. We knew that they were going to use numbers against us. They had a great three-man rotation in the bigs. Peacock could probably start for most teams, and the other two [Lawal and Favors] are going to play basketball for a long time. That gives your team strength.”
