March 3, 2018
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | GT Gallery | USATSI Gallery
GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH JOSH PASTNER
Opening Statement:
“I’m really proud of our guys, way to end the regular season on this homestand with two wins. We have 14 wins in ACC play over two years, which is a great accomplishment in a major rebuild as we continue to try to build the program. These are great things for us to be able to accomplish. The crowd was great both Thursday and Saturday. The energy in the building was terrific.”
On Evan Cole:
“I thought Evan Cole was great today. I had to pull him out early again. I had to jump him, but after that he had a double-double. Really proud of him. Where he’s come from in sense of where he started the beginning of the year to where he is now — to get a double-double in ACC play is not easy to do.”
On Wake Forest:
“Last time we played Wake Forest, they had a season low in turnovers (5). This time they had a season high (22). [Bryant] Crawford had nine assists with no turnovers last time, this time he had season-high eight [turnovers]. We did a much better job defensively.”
On Georgia Tech’s defense:
“We had seven ‘kills’ today – that’s our goal. We had seven on Thursday. That’s three stops in a row. We did that seven different times, and that was good.”
On Georgia Tech’s team morale:
“The bench and the guys have been great all year long, even through some tough stretches. Guys have stayed positive and upbeat. They’ve come to practice and worked with unbelievable attitudes. That is not normal in this day and age. That’s a credit to those young men and a really good culture.”
WAKE FOREST HEAD COACH DANNY MANNING
Opening Statement:
“Down the stretch, I thought Georgia Tech made a lot more plays than we did. Leading up to that, in the first half, I thought we did some OK things, but we turned the ball over too many times. In the first half, we turned it over 13 times, which led to 11 points for them, and that put us in a tough spot. Then in the second half, they got to the rim far too many times. They got to the rim for layups and offensive rebounds really hurt us too, because when we would contest a shot and they would miss it, they would get it back quite a few times. That certainly hurt us. They got nine offensive rebounds in the second half and I’m pretty sure a lot of those led to some second-chance points.”
On whether the ball got to Doral Moore enough after Georgia Tech’s Ben Lammers picked up his fourth foul:
“Yeah. You don’t need the ball to make someone foul you. As a post player, you can post up strong and make him move his feet and play defense and do other things. [Just] like you don’t need the ball to score. When your team’s in the bonus, you post up strong, you get fouled, you go to the free-throw line. And then [Lammers] did a good job of playing without fouling.”
On Wake Forest’s turnovers, particularly by Bryant Crawford:
“Too many. He had five at halftime, three in the second half for a total of eight. That’s hard to come back from.”
On 50-50 balls:
“I know in the first half, there were seven 50-50 balls that we charted and they got four and we got three. So that’s not the percentage side that you want to be on. In the second half, those long rebounds also hurt us.”
On whether coming off a week-long break makes the loss more frustrating:
“It’s always frustrating when you lose. It doesn’t matter what the time you had off [was]. It’s always disappointing and frustrating when you lose. We thought we could do some things, [and] we did some things throughout the course of the ballgame that gave us a chance to have some life, and we didn’t make enough multiple-effort plays in regards to contesting shots and then going to get long rebounds. There were a couple times [that] long rebounds bounced out and, sometimes – I know one or two times – it hit the ground two times before anybody got to it. You want to make sure that you come back and you get those long rebounds.”
On how difficult it was to deal with Georgia Tech’s Josh Okogie’s athleticism:
“Not difficult at all, from the standpoint [that] he’s going to play like that every night. That’s how Josh plays. I watched him play in AAU ball. He leads our league in getting to the free-throw line, and he certainly did that tonight. He plays on ‘go,’ full-tilt, all game long. He was able to do that again tonight. He had a really good game.”
On whether Okogie is an all-ACC player:
“Absolutely, absolutely. He plays hard. He makes things happen. I know he had five steals tonight, and he had all of those in the first half. So he did a good job of running through passing lanes. He is someone that definitely should get some type of consideration for all-conference honors.”
