Feb. 15, 2012
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery
GEORGIA TECH COACH Brian Gregory
On the Wake Forest zone…
“Well they ran it the whole game. Give Jeff credit. Their team has battled all year long and unfortunately for them, they’ve had some stretches in games where they just couldn’t buy a basket. They have played much better in this league than their record indicates – there’s no question about that. He’s doing a great job in terms of building this thing back up the right way, with the right guys. He has a couple seniors that can make a difference in games, which is important. Their zone was effective. They have good length and their guards worked pretty hard in it. What they did a good job with is that they rebounded well out of it. Our 14 turnovers didn’t hurt either. They just played a much more focused game than our guys did, so give them credit on that. In this league if you’re not ready to play, you put yourself in a tough situation and that’s exactly what we did. We came out in the second half and played the way that we’re capable of playing, but unfortunately our biggest challenge at times, as is Wake Forest’s biggest challenge at times, is our ability to sustain it. Over the 40 minutes, Wake Forest did a better job of sustaining their game plan than we did, and that’s why they were successful.”
On whether he was happy with the way his defense played…
“No. Here is the deal. They killed us on the glass. For us to be good, we have to rebound well. So am I happy with our initial defense? Yeah, because it was pretty darn good. We forced some tough shots. We forced three or four shot clock violations. But you have to finish the play. We struggle finishing defensive possessions and we struggle finishing offensive possessions where me make a couple nice passes and get an open shot and we can’t make it. On the defense, you have to finish it with defensive rebounds, I thought that was the key to the game. I thought that McKie, that was probably the fourth time this year where in winning time – the last eight or nine minutes of a close game – the other team had the toughest player on the court that made the big plays. We have yet to have that happen for us. At Maryland it was Mosely and this game it was McKie. You need guys to be able to make some plays or get some stops and rebounds, and we struggle in that department. And give McKie credit, he hit the big three, hit the basket off the shot clock situation on a baseline out of bounds, and he hit two free throws. He had seven straight points. I think we were probably up three at the time and he had seven straight points.”
WAKE FOREST COACH JEFF BZDELIK
Opening statement…
“We did a good job on the boards. We made some timely shots when it counted and we got some timely stops defensively when it counted.”
On the important baskets from Travis McKie and others…
“I thought that he willed us in a lot of ways. When we needed some timely shots, he hit them. Travis wasn’t the only one knocking them down either: Chase hit one to get us back to within one point and woke the crowd up a little bit. All of our guys did a good job of not turning the ball over in a bad way that would have given them points. Overall, it’s just an excellent win for us.
On Chase Fischer…
“The way he played today just showed his spirit. I just kept telling him to shoot the ball; it’s never going to go in if it doesn’t go up. As long as he’s taking quality shots then he needs to keep shooting the ball. We all had some good looks throughout the course of the game, and we just kept shooting the ball when we were open.”
On rebounding from the loss against Clemson…
“It was nothing but positive. We felt like we were going to win this game and that we just needed to stick to the game plan. Twice we gave up offensive rebounds off of missed free throws tonight and you could just feel that they were going to cash in on those opportunities. Those are the kinds of things that we have to stop: we can’t allow people to finish plays like that. For the most part today, we did a really good job of finishing our own plays.
