Feb. 16, 2013
Recap | Box Score | AP Gallery | GT Photo Gallery – Wake Forest
–
Georgia Tech Head Coach Brian Gregory
Opening statement…
Unfortunately I think that Jeff [Bzdelik] and myself have been through a lot of these games so far this year. We haven’t won very many of them, and it’s tough, but I thought that both teams played extremely hard. It was a hard fought, physical game, and we just made a couple of more plays at the end, and sometimes that’s what it takes. We both have young teams, guys make young mistakes out there. We made our share, they made their share. We’re just pleased with the win. We didn’t play very well the other night, and we give Clemson credit on that, and our guys bounced back with a hard fought win where we did a lot of good things. We just need to keep moving forward. These are worth a lot. Obviously Wake has played tremendously well at home with great energy. Young guys always play better at home, and their guys have. We needed to match that today, and I thought that we did that.”
On Marcus Georges-Hunt stepping up today…
“He’s a tough kid, and even though he’s a freshman, I think he knows that I have a lot of trust in him. I went to him four or five times down the stretch, and he made big play after big play for us. I think that one of the illustrious members of the media asked me if he’d be a guy that I see as a “go-to” guy, because we’ve had so many close games. We’ve kind of gone back and forth to who we’re going to have make big plays, and I thought that he [Georges-Hunt] did a pretty good job of helping me find that answer today. It’s a credit to him. Robert [Carter, Jr.] made a great pass to him in the post on that one. We executed that last play pretty well for him to get all the way to the basket, and because he went so hard, I think it drew a lot of defenders and that’s how we could get the offensive rebound. I think the play of the game for us was when we kicked the ball out of the post and Brandon Reed had an open-three at the top of key, and he made the extra pass to Marcus for a wide-open three, and Marcus made it. We’ve talked about for us to grow as a program, we have to make the extra pass and make other players better and make the game easier for each other, and we did it on that possession. In addition to the three points, I think that was an emotional lift for us as well.”
On holding the Deacons 14 field goals and 29% …
“We’re halfway decent defensively. We were active. I thought that Daniel Miller was tremendous defensively today. I don’t think he always gets the credit that he deserves on the defensive end even with five blocks today. He probably had 15 to 18 deflections as well. He gets six rebounds but very rarely does his man ever get one. He didn’t get up a lot of second-chance points. We’re getting better defensively, and at times, we need it because young teams struggle on offense. I thought we did a good job. [Travis] McKie is a good player and a tough match-up. We had a one wrong coverage and he killed us on a three. We did a good job on C.J. [Harris] even though he gets 15 he got to the free-throw line and give Mfon [Udofia] credit for that. He has to sacrifice his offensive sometimes because as a senior, we put him on the best perimeter players. Today it was on Harris. His emphasis was on the defensive end and it probably won us the game. If he gets 18 instead of 15 we lose.”
Wake Forest Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
Opening Statement…
“Obviously, it was a very tough week. Two close losses will test one resolve, but we have great, great character young men in that locker room. No pity parties. Our resolve will be tested and they will past the test. They care, and they have been knocked down this week but they will bounce back up and I’m confident in that. In the first half I thought we were very sluggish offensively. We stood around a lot that really contributed to us shooting a very low percentage. In the second half we moved much better and we got open shots and opportunities to the rim. We just didn’t make those open shots and convert those opportunities to the rim. Once again it came down to a timely stop and a timely shot and we came up short.”
On the Boston College loss affecting the game today…
“No, I think it was our inability to score. We are defending, we are getting some stops, and yeah they missed some shots around the rim too. But we battled and competed defensively. We were sluggish in the first half offensively. In the second half we did a better job of moving and attacking. We had some layup opportunities, and you are not going to win when between three players, we were one for sixteen. You are not going to win a lot of games like that unless your defense is really special.”
On the strategy of the last plays of the game…
“Well with 8.7 seconds we have a play. We get the ball in C.J.’s hands and he is going to the rim strong, so we are aggressive with spacing, he had a player falling in behind him as an option. He had a player on the baseline in the weak-side corner as an option. We had the spacing at the top of the key; if you watch the film we had good spacing. He tried to make a pass to the weak side corner and it was deflected out of bounds but we did what we wanted to do it’s something we work on. Again, we got the ball to the backset with options and the ball in the senior’s hands. 1.7 seconds we had an out of bounds play. We had options for Travis cutting to the rim. Really, the play was designed for Aaron Rountree III to go to the rim, and they did a good job of covering everybody. There was one player left open, and that was Devin, and he had a good look at it but we wanted to go to the rim.”
