Jan. 15, 2014
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GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Brian Gregory
Opening Statement
“Pittsburgh has built a great program. They play with great toughness. They share the ball well. They know exactly who they are and they rarely take a bad shot. The guys know who’s getting the shots, so they’re always in good position to rebound.”
“They took seven three’s the whole night – that’s who they are. At the same time, even with us as disjointed as we were out there with who we had out there, I thought we showed pretty good fight. There was a 6-8 minute stretch there where we lost ourselves defensively. I’m disappointed in our defense right now. We’re not playing defense the way you need to play in this league and obviously we didn’t rebound tonight worth anything. Give them credit. It doesn’t matter if you have five guards out there, you gotta hit people, you gotta get to the ball and you gotta pursue it. You gotta finish the defensive possession with a rebound and we didn’t do that. So you can make excuses with the injuries or whatever, but you gotta fight on the glass and we didn’t have that so I’m disappointed in that.”
On giving up points in the paint and second-chance points…
“They are a very good interior passing team, and they shoot 57% (tonight) because most of them were layups. The second-chance points (difference) was 10, and you lose by seven, so that’s the difference in the game right there. That’s how they scored. That’s what they do.”
On the turning point in the second half…
“I thought a big play in the game – it was either eight or 10 maybe – and we gave up the back-screen lob to Kam (Holsey) and we can’t make those mistakes and we made them tonight. You don’t have to be perfect, but you gotta be a little tighter then we were in crucial situations. I thought we executed well offensively at times. But some of it had to do with the lineups we had out there. We had two guards trying to run some action at the four, so you gotta try and scrap a lot of stuff and try and make some plays. It’s going to be hard for us to do well on the glass when you have multiple guys playing 25-plus minutes and they don’t get any defensive rebounds.”
On foul trouble being a factor…
“Definitely (it was). Still I thought we got good minutes from Corey (Heyward). He’s coming on pretty good for us. And we had some guys that didn’t get to play as many minutes because they weren’t as focused as they needed to be defensively and they got in foul trouble. Q (Quinton Stephens) only played 10 minutes and he had five fouls. We need him out there and he stretches the court. It takes away a lot of our stuff when he’s not able to play at that spot for us.”
On Daniel Miller’s play…
“They trapped the post a couple times early. The one thing is some of the stuff offensively we had to revert to him setting a lot of ball screens and everyone else spacing. We played 6, 8, 10 minutes with Stacey (Poole) at the four and just had to simplify things out there. I thought in the last 10 minutes we did a good job of getting him the ball and we have to do that more. He needs to continue to stay aggressive.”
PITT HEAD COACH JAMIE DIXON
Opening Statement
“Obviously, excited about the win. I’m really happy how we responded. The rebounding was something we came in and had to do, and had to win that on the road. Obviously, by that kind of margin is good. We made free throws down the stretch and they kept battling as we thought they would. Their senior dominated the team. They’re going through some injuries too. I tend to feel sorry for having all the injuries that they’ve had. We’ve had our one kid go down, but they’ve been through a lot of things. A couple kids couldn’t play against us and it was probably to our advantage. The rebounding really stood out. Offensively, some of our passing is the only negative I can find for us. That’s out of character. We’re a low turnover team, we’re the best in the country. We just seemed to have a few too many and it led to transition baskets for them. For the most part we took good shots and that’s how we shot 57 percent and 65 in the second half. I’m proud of our guys and we had a lot of freshmen play really well. We just have to keep them up in that group and get them better. They’re a great group who will get better because of their attitude and commitment.”
Cameron [Wright] and Lamar [Patterson] struggled shooting in the first half and picked it up in the second.
“They didn’t have their best game in the first half. Lamar made a couple layups early and then didn’t seem to have the patience that he normally has. It wasn’t his best game, but we had other players step up. The passing was terrific and the layups. We got numerous layups and that’s what we do. We’re a good shooting team. We do believe the layups are our best way to go. We move well without the ball on our sets and we score in transition. I was happy with some of those things. There were a couple things we could have done better; cut down on the turnovers, make some more free throws in the stretch in the first half and that kind of pulled the momentum out from us. We were doing some good things and then they made their run. I was really happy how we came out in the second half. We knew what we had to do and we did it.”
Was Tech’s rebounding a focus for you?
“Our numbers are good rebounding-wise. We feel we could be better. Our one loss is when we were out-rebounded. It is an emphasis for us every game. We know their numbers and we know they are missing a guard or two that contributes to that rebounding total. We did a good job. It starts with good defense and we did a good job defensively for the most part. Our zone was our worse part of our defense for us. They hurt it in the few times we played it. It worked out alright in the second half. It’s about defending and finishing up with the rebound and you have to do both. They have a very good team with some injuries that they’re suffering through and we’re fortunate to get them in that situation. Marcus Georges-Hunt is a very good player. We recruited him. We know how good he is. We’ve played against Trae Golden before and he continued to get to the lane and drive us.”
