Dec. 22, 2017
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery
GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH JOSH PASTNER
Opening statement:
“Give Wright State credit. Our defense just failed us in the second half, unfortunately. We had 18 total turnovers, 11 in the second half. You look at their numbers and the way they shot in the second half and it’s just a recipe for disaster. We’re just not really good right now. The good news is we’re headed into the ACC, after Coppin State next Wednesday, [and] we’ll be way underneath the radar … We just have to get better. We have to get our main guys, who are playing those heavy minutes, they have got to be better for us. We have to get stops. We score 81 points, but don’t get enough stops. But you have to give Wright State credit for that.”
On second-half woes:
“We’ve been poor to start the second half. I’m going to maybe make some changes to what we’re doing. I’ve got a couple ideas and we’ll deal with it when we play Coppin State.”
On what jumpstarted Wright State’s second-half run:
“We fell asleep on penetration. I can think of a few: Jose [Alvarado] helps off of a ball-side corner, kid hits a three. We’re up 77-75 and Josh Okogie fell asleep basically and a kid hits a three right in his grill there. They penetrated a couple times and we just watched the ball and their guys are sliding and moving. It was just disappointing.”
On Ben Lammers’ conditioning after being injured:
“I’ve always said this – I believe in conditioning, it takes about a week-and-a-half to get out of shape and about a month to get in shape. He’s still not cleared, like when we do running drills or sprints, [Georgia Tech’s medical staff] won’t let him do the sprints, he’s got to do pushups instead. But it’s on him. We need him to be better. Regardless of his conditioning, he’s got to play better.”
On Georgia Tech’s upcoming schedule:
“I still believe in this team. The great thing about the ACC is there’s still a lot of great opportunities in front of us once we get through Coppin State. We’ve still got Coppin State and Yale [in non-conference play]. But, we’re still a team with no margin for error. We can win against a lot of teams and beat a lot of opponents but we still can lose to anybody. We’ve just got to get a lot better.”
WRIGHT STATE HEAD COACH SCOTT NAGY
On the win:
“It’s big. We’ve been here since Wednesday and everybody I run into down here says ‘Wright State? Where’s Wright State?’. So that’s the thing I think that we’re fighting. We just don’t have that identity yet and that is one of the things I would like to change about Wright State. That people will know where Wright State is – in Dayton, Ohio. I don’t think, I haven’t been there very long I’ve only been there for a couple of years, but I’m not sure we’ve that we have had to many high major wins like the ACC. It’s important for us.”
On watching if other teams shot a lot of three-pointers versus Georgia Tech:
“No because we don’t shoot a lot of threes and we’ve been awful. This team has struggled from three. I think last game we went 6-for-30, so we’ve not been shooting the ball well at all. Now we have some good shooters but they’ve not been shooting the ball well. We shot a little bit better tonight – 9-for-20 would be really good for us and it would be really good for anybody … obviously, we hit some big ones. We hit some very big ones and some of them were off rebounds. I was happy for our guys because we’ve struggled offensively.”
On Loudon Love’s play:
“I try to challenge him every night. Obviously, the thing he’s got to do is quit turning the ball over. He’s leading our team in turnovers from the center position and he doesn’t touch the ball enough to do that. He’s hard to guard. He is 275 pounds and it’s legitimate. Two years ago when he came to us, he was 320 coming off a knee injury out of high school, didn’t play his senior year. So we decided to redshirt him. He’s got his body in shape. To have a freshman that looks like that is obviously a luxury for us to be able to have him the next four years. We try to go to him. We need to surround him with some good shooters and he’s just continuing to get better for us. He played with a lot of confidence tonight.”
On Georgia Tech’s full court press:
“In the first half, it hurt us. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t handle it very well. In the second half, I thought we handled it a lot better.”
