March 22, 2017
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery
– GEORGIA TECH COACH Josh Pastner
Opening Statement…
“It was a great win for us. We lead from wire to wire, which is not easy to do in a place like this. To be able to do that, and I have talked to our guys about moving from a good team, which we are, to a great team, I believe as we had to get a good road win, and that was today.”
On how they were able to pull away…
“We made some shots. Ole Miss is a very good basketball team. To beat Monmouth and Syracuse on the road like they did, you are really good to do that. But we answered well by moving the ball. We had 21 assists on 27 made field goals. That is a staple in our offense is the ball movement. It bothered us with some of the pressure, but we made some shots.”
On how they were able to stop Ole Miss from scoring…
“We are extremely limited on offense. Our margin for error is zero. But one of the things we hang our hat on is defense. We are one of the five six best defensive teams. If you look at Kenpom, we are one of the best in defensive efficiency in the entire country. We led the ACC, which is the best conference in college basketball. We led in field goal percentage defense in league play. So we hang our hat on defense.”
OLE MISS COACH ANDY KENNEDY
On the topic of Ben Lammers…
“I’m not sure if he was the defensive player of the year in the ACC, but I know he led the league in blocked shots. We had a bit of an advantage because we played Saturday while they played Sunday. We had an advantage in the rest standpoint but in the preparation standpoint we didn’t know who we were playing.”
On how Ole Miss was affected by the zone…
“We played well coming into tonight. For us, we lead the nation in free throws made. That’s a stat that won’t happen again. But we went 6-8. I thought the zone made us settle a little bit. Some of it is the zone because at Syracuse we made 15 3’s and started falling in love with it. You know the guys that were making them a few days ago were not making them tonight.”
On what happened down the stretch…
“We were trying to do too much on our own. We had opportunities though. We had the game come down to four. We missed a couple point blank looks. It was disappointing when we couldn’t get a shot, we turned it over a couple times down the stretch.”
