Nov. 11, 2016
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GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Josh Pastner
Opening Statement
“We’ll take it, always good to get the first win. Just a couple things, I was disappointed with our pace of play; I still think we’ve got to play way faster. We spent so much time on pace of play and attack mode and I felt a lot of times we were paralyzed in the way we were playing, lot of standing and not enough pace. However, we still got to 70, I would like us to get up in the 80s and 90s but we want to win. We found a way, kind of gutted it out. Defensively we were really good today for the most part. I thought we did a great job defensively. Biggest thing is that they beat us on the offensive glass, we’ve got to be better about that. They got us on the 50-50 balls, a plus one. I loved that we had 17 assists on 28 made field goals, only four turnovers the second half. There were still some positives that we did and like I said, defensively, which we have not been really good at in our scrimmage and our exhibition, that today we really defended well. Offensively we’ve just got to get our pace better, just got to flat out get our pace better, even play faster. That’s something that we’ve spent a lot of time on that we’ve got to get better at.”
On Josh Okogie’s performance:
“Josh did a nice job, he had 18 [points] and five [rebounds] in 21 minutes, I think Josh Okogie has got a chance down the road to be an All-ACC player. He’s really good; I’m a big, big fan of Josh Okogie. I just didn’t think he played really well tonight, he can even play way better. He’s got a chance to be an excellent, high level, big time Georgia Tech basketball player; he’s got that ability. He’s got to be really focused on being disciplined with the little details, on every little thing. Two of his three fouls were 94 feet from the basket in the first half, they were silly fouls. Those are just little things that he has got to get better at.”
On increasing the pace of play:
“It’s just going to take time. You’ve got to remember Justin Moore, even though he got four assists and only one turnover, he’s a freshman. He’s playing 32 minutes today as a freshman; he’s in the ACC playing 32 minutes. Not having Josh Heath hurts because the pace of play, he helps on that. Tadric didn’t play today. He didn’t practice the last two days, he had an injury, and we expect him to be ready to go on Monday. We’ve just got to keep working on it, cleaning some things up. We still scored 70, and versus Shorter we had 97 and versus Mississippi State we had 80 and we did shoot 56-percent from the field. I just still feel that we could be a lot faster with our pace and our cuts. It’s going to take just time and film and work. I don’t want to call a play every time down. I don’t want to, I don’t like doing that. I want our guys to be able to play with freedom within structure and be able to be a basketball player and make plays. With that comes a lot of responsibility, they’ve got to understand how to play the right way, how to play with freedom, how to play in attack mode and how to play with pace. Part of this year is going to be ups and downs and growing pains to be able to understand that is what we’ve got to do.”
On Ben Lammers confidence:
“Coach Reveno has done a good job with Ben with the big men stuff, he’s done a good job helping him develop. Again, Ben had 15 [points] and 8 [rebounds] and he should have had about 25 and 16. He’s good enough to get that. He’s got to be more aggressive, even though he had five blocks. He didn’t play a lot of minutes last year, … A lot of these guys have just not played minutes and so they’re going to be thrown in the fire and there’s going to be highs and lows because they’re going to just get better by just playing.”
TENNESSEE TECH HEAD COACH STEVE PAYNE
Opening Statement
“I thought we played hard. I was pleased. We had a freshman play pretty well in his first college game, but we don’t usually shoot the ball that poorly. I think a lot of that had to do with their length. They had a lot of length and they came and got our shooters. We acted like we had never seen zone before, but credit to them and what they did. I know they [Georgia Tech] are still working to get their guys in here and upgrade the talent level, but they did a very good job. The kids played hard tonight, they played together and he’s [Josh Pastner] going to get good players in here. They’ve still got pretty good players that have been recruited in the ACC. Those guys are pretty good players for us. I’m pleased with our guys and how we played. I would have liked to have hit a couple shots and see where we went.”
On the offensive rebounds in the first half
“We had to, we were missing a lot of them. We missed a lot of shots. There were a lot of opportunities there. We try to take a little pride on being physical and having some toughness and I thought we did a good job of that. I challenged them at halftime and we didn’t do a very good job of coming out in the second half, giving ourselves a chance to win the game by playing good defense and rebound the ball again. They hit some shots late in the clock, had a couple key offensive rebounds on us that hurt us and kind of broke our spirits some. And they got in transition right. If you asked me coming into the game, I thought we were a really good shooting team and didn’t know if we did anything else well. Again, I credit a lot of that to their length and a lot to their size out there.”
Takeaways from the game
“I told them before the game, if we win, Saturday morning, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And if we lose, Saturday, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We have 31 games in the regular season and they are all about getting better. We lost three really good seniors last year off of a good team. They are hard to replace. The guys that were our go-to were offensive guys and everybody is playing a new role or we have some new guys playing. I think we can rebound the basketball now. I was really concerned about our rebounding. We’ve got to get back and go to work on our zone offense. If I watched the game tonight, I’d play zone every possession against us. Tonight, we didn’t look like we were very comfortable against it. Again, I think that would have been a strength coming into the game. But I am pleased with their toughness and effort tonight. We just didn’t execute very well.”
On matching up with Lammers
“He is, but again, the guy that is guarding him just turned 19 in October. He’s a young cat and I think he did some good things too, but he is a big guy. More than that, I think we let him duck in on us a couple times. He’s a good skill guy. We knew coming in that if you let him have a 15-17 foot jumper, he’s a really good shooter. I’m okay with what we did with him.”
