Nov. 26, 2004
– GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Paul Hewitt
“This is very difficult, for a lot of reasons. You never want to see that happen to anyone, but especially to someone who works as hard as Jeremis does and loves to play as much as he does. The injury, he’ll get over, but the time that he’ll be out will be particularly hard for Jeremis. We’ve got to think about his long-term recovery. As far as our team is concerned, we’ll be fine. We’ll concentrate on his recovery and that his injury is nothing more serious than what happened to Theo (Theodis Tarver, last season). Theo’s injury was very, very devastating but it was injury that was able to make a 100 percent recovery from, and we’ll hope the same for Jeremis.
“Again, early on, I thought our defense carried us . . . but it’s hard to dissect that game right now.
“For a young man like Jeremis, it’s going to be really hard to sit out. We sat him out for seven or eight days of practice and it absolutely killed him. He’s a guy who absolutely wants to be on the court all the time. Obviously we’re going to hope for the best, that it’s an injury he can make a 100 percent recovery from, but even if it’s the best case scenario, the time out is going to be very difficult for him. You’ve just got to be around him all the time and do the best you can to keep his mind off it.
“Those kids in that locker room have a lot of respect for Jeremis because he has come in and worked very hard to earn their respect. His ability speaks for itself; he’s a very good basketball player, but he has the respect of everyone in that locker room because of how hard he works. It’s unfortunate. He was trying to do something right and step over and take the charge.
“As far as our team is concerned, we’ll figure out a way to band together and overcome what we’re going to lose. Knowing how hard Jeremis worked to prepare to have a very good freshman season, for this to happen to him, that’s what you think about more. Everyone in that locker room will tell you that as a group, we’re going to be fine. As individuals, they know how precious these seasons are and how precious these games are.
UALR HEAD COACH STEVE SHIELDS
“Georgia Tech is so explosive and so athletic from the guard spots, and then you’ve got Schenscher on the inside to deal with. I thought our team did an outstanding job of getting on the offensive glass. That was a huge area of concern for us before the game and we got 14 offensive rebounds, and nine of those were in the first half. You’ve got to give credit to their basketball team. They are a very well coached team and they are very, very aggressive with the basketball.”
“There’s no doubt that this (Georgia Tech) was a challenged basketball team tonight, and we knew that they would be coming into the game. They shot the ball poorly the first two games and coming into tonight we knew that we had to contain the paint and try to keep the ball out of paint off the dribble and then get the shooters, second. First thing we’ve got to do is take care of the paint because they are so athletic in getting there. We knew we were going to face a hungry basketball team tonight, especially coming off of the Illinois-Chicago game, but the thing we are disappointed in is that our guys feel like they didn’t answer the call the first 25 minutes. We got down 22-2, but I was really proud of our guys and the way we kept battling. We got it to 17 at the half and we got an open look at the start of the second half that could have made it 14. I thought we bounced back well in the second half and I could see the spirit in the guys’ eyes throughout the game, which is a huge positive for our team.”
