Dec. 11, 2010
– GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Paul Hewitt
Opening statement
“Glad to see Daniel [Miller] with another strong performance. As those inside guys improve and develop you will see our team improve and develop. Nate [Hicks] had a good outing. I wish he could have gotten on the stat sheet a little more but he had a couple of blocked shots. The guy that we have to get going a little more is Kammeon [Holsey]. He is much better than he is showing. He is just a little lost right now, especially on the defensive end of the floor. I think what I am realizing about him is that he is much more comfortable playing the 2-3 zone as opposed to the man-to-man. Overall I am pleased with some of the things that I saw as our team is moving forward.
“In the first half I think we had four turnovers which is a pretty good number. We set our sights on not turning it over at all in the second half and we only had two. I see some small things. There was clearly a lapse in intensity there in the second half when they made a couple threes and we started wandering around. We had a couple of baskets in transition that were point blank misses and suddenly the rim starts to shrink on you and you get a little tight. We got some great shots against the pressure. I think that Moe Miller will make the next 99 in a row from [point blank]. I cant see him missing the next 99 that he will attempt.”
On the second half of the game
“I didn’t think that we made good decisions in the second half. At one time, Iman came off and he was wide open inside the foul line and he has to shoot that. Moe one time was right there just below the foul line, instead he threw it to Jason [Morris] and luckily it went out of bounds off of them. We were betwixt and between when it came to shooting the ball in the paint.”
On Moe Miller starting
“Moe in transition has been much better at getting out and making plays at the other end of the break. In practice he has been terrific so we felt like we could see what else he could bring to the game. In the first half that was accurate. Transition wise we got the ball up the floor. Our wings as a whole have to do a better job of running out. They have to get down to the corner, flatten out the defense and play from there.”
JUNIOR GUARD Iman Shumpert
On the game
“We had the game under control but I think that we got a little lax about everything. I think they hit some tough shots, some shots with our hands in their faces. We missed a couple lay ups and a couple of shots in the lane that we should have made. But we know what we have to do.”
On the slower pace of the schedule
“It meant a lot to slow the pace down of the schedule. We have been focusing on picking the things up in practice and making sure that guys get up extra shots and are taking care of their bodies. I guess the biggest thing is making sure that we get some rest.”
SAVANNAH STATE COACH HORACE BRODNAX
Opening Statement
“We’ve got a young program, we are not of the Georgia Techs of the world. The guys played well, we just didn’t get out of the gates. We always talk about getting out of the gates, always talk about how it is easy to protect what you’ve got, it’s less energy to protect what you’ve got. It takes more energy to recover what you have lost. We were down, I don’t know, 20 maybe, and we cut it to seven with a missed layup. It’s not that my guy can’t shoot layups, but it takes more energy to come back. During that stretch we made a couple of bad decisions. But, we move on and keep pressing.”
On what his team did well on the second half run
“Our two best players shot the ball. Josh Montgomery hit a three, Jovonni Shuler hit a three, and it kind of changed the complexity of the game. Those guys started knocking down shots. I’m still amazed that [Shuler] still doesn’t take certain shots. I got on him because he deferred several times to [Christopher Spears]. I told him that I would rather for you to take a bad shot than for him to take a good shot. [Spears] missed some easy layups today, and [Shuler] deferred to him a couple of times and we got turnovers.”
On if he saw anything from the Kennesaw State game that he thought he could replicate
“I thought that if we played solid defense, which I thought we did early, and if we just stayed in front of them. I thought we guarded them well. I thought that if we could play our best defense we could guard them. They don’t shoot the ball extremely well, and I think that is how we got back in during that stretch, they weren’t making shots and we were making shots. We’ve just got a short tank. When we go up against these guys, we may have a five-gallon tank and they probably have a 30-gallon tank. We have to expend our energy very efficiently.”
On how his team limited Tech’s Iman Shumpert to one field goal in the second half
“We thought Shumpert is a guy that could shoot the ball, but we wanted to play him for the drive first then if he pulled up for the jump shot we wanted to contest it. We gave him the opportunity to shoot so that we could contest it. Our guys came out and played a little bit more with a chip on their shoulder and with a little more energy and tried to finish it out on a positive note.”
