Dec. 28, 2004
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery
– GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Paul Hewitt
“Fran’s team played very well. They put a clinic on how to run that motion offense that we run. We started running that about two years ago. I brought John O’Connor, who’s on my staff now, down here and he showed us how to run that four-out, one-in motion offense, which gives you a lot of spacing on the floor. It’s a great offense to run, and I thought they did a great job running it the first 35 minutes of the game. Probably at the end they just got a little worn down.
“Obviously our freshmen, Anthony Morrow and Ra’Sean Dickey, played extremely well. For the last few games, I’ve talked about how all three of those young guys, but especially Dickey and Morrow, have been playing better and better in practice. For Ra’Sean, it’s been in the effort area and for Anthony on the defensive end. You saw tonight what those guys do very well – they can score. All three of those guys can score. Zam’s minutes aren’t as consistent, so you may not see it, but trust me, all three can score. Certainly, if they didn’t step up and make big plays offensively for us tonight, the game would have been even closer. And the game was close. The final score was not indicative of how well Lafayette played. They played extremely well. They ran their offense to a tee. They got whatever they wanted. They got whatever they wanted for 35 minutes, and finally at the end, Morrow made some shots and you could see that deflate them a little bit.
“They threw that one-three-one at us. It’s an unusual defense, and it kind of stunned us a little bit. That’s one of the reasons why they were able to stay in the ball game as long as they did. They did a nice job changing defenses.
Freshmen continue to play this many minutes? — “If they play like that, yeah. They’re very capable, and you know me, I don’t shy away from playing the bench. You earn the time out there.
On B.J. Elder’s play tonight — “He was more aggressive. He was frustrated in the locker room, but I told him, At least you were aggressive looking for your shot. The shots are going to fall. Maybe he was pressing a little bit, but the fact that he came out with an aggressive mind set made me happy. B.J.’s a great player and he’ll be fine. If he plays with that type of aggressiveness, he’ll be fine.
LAFAYETTE HEAD COACH FRAN O’HANLON
“I thought we competed pretty well early but their athleticism was too much and they kept running very good players at you. This is an excellent basketball team and when they started to go on their run, we just lost our poise. They are very good.”
On his team’s play in the first 29 minutes — “I thought our guys were very focused on the game and came out with a lot of fight and we also did a better job of taking care of the basketball than we have in some of our games, and that was also a key for us.”
On the score at halftime (37-29) — “We had some open looks that we didn’t knock down and we may have been closer if we make some of those shots. In a venue like this sometimes those shots are not as easy as you think.”
“I just hope we get better. We want to get better each practice and each game. This gives us an opportunity playing in a venue like this, and I thought we did a better job with our poise tonight than we did against Louisville. Hopefully our poise will continue to get better and that will help carry us through conference play.”
