Dec. 20, 2014
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | GT Photo Gallery
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GEORGIA TECH COACH Brian Gregory
Opening Statement
“We beat a very good team today, a team that’s only going to get better. I mentioned it earlier in the week about some of the high quality coaches in the country or even in the SEC, and no one mentions Kevin (Stallings). He does a great job. That’s as well-coached team that we’ll face all year long.”
On the second half:
“We were fortunate to play well enough in the second half to get a big win for this team. We had to get a little better defensively and little more efficient on offense in the second half. I thought we did that. We got a lot of good basketball from a lot of different guys, which is what we need.”
On Travis Jorgenson:
“Travis had maybe his best all-around game since he’s been back. He was good defensively as well. We’ve worked hard on our zone offense in terms of the guards not just standing around, (they have been) attacking gaps and creating shot for each other and hitting the bigs on those drives.”
On defense:
“You have to be so disciplined defensively. In the second half, every time we made a mistake, they scored. They capitalized. That’s when you know you’re playing a good team…Our ball pressure in the second half was better, and our activity off the ball was better. ”
On assessment of season so far:
“We need to continue to improve. I like where we’re at, but it’s not going to be good enough tomorrow. We’ve got to get better tomorrow. That’s the only way we can do it right now.”
VANDERBILT HEAD COACH KEVIN STALLINGS
Opening statement
“I thought our guys got a little rattled there in the second half. I guess it shouldn’t be a major surprise to me. It’s a major disappointment. They (Georgia Tech) just played much more physically and much more aggressively than we did. They deserved to win.”
Did Georgia Tech take away the three-point shot in the second half?
“No. I don’t think we ran real good offense. They might have taken it away in the first half. We didn’t play particularly well on either end of the floor. Josh Henderson played well, particularly in the first half. I thought James Siakam played real hard. I was really proud of those two.”
How was Georgia Tech more aggressive?
“It was both halves. They had 10 offensive rebounds in both halves. That’s really where the game was lost for us. They established themselves as the aggressor on the boards. We didn’t have a good response to it. We didn’t have a good response. That’s my fault.”
Did Georgia Tech attack zone better in second half?
“Yes, it seems like they scored better in the second half whether that was as a result of getting a lot of second shots, and scoring that way. They beat us in transition one time when we were trying to get back in our zone; they beat us for a transition three right at the start of the second half — just some things that don’t happen if you’re playing as hard as you need to play. We just weren’t playing at the level of intensity that we need to play, and they were. That was the first time are guys had seen some adversity; the first time our guys had seen a hostile crowd – the young ones, the freshmen. We didn’t respond to that very well.”
On switching away from man-to-man defense
“They didn’t make enough first shots to beat us. We just felt like the zone was working if we could ever get a rebound. But that was a big “if” because it didn’t seem like we got many.”
