Jan. 25, 2018
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | USATSI Gallery
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Georgia Tech Head Coach Josh Pastner
Opening Statement
“I give Florida State credit. I think they played really well and they’ve got a really good team and a lot of good players who are well coached. Regarding our team, besides two games last year and one game this year, we’ve always battled even when it looks like things are getting out of hand. We’ve always found a way to fight and get ourselves back in striking range. There’s some times we haven’t been able to get over the hump. But this is year two in major rebuild and as I’ve told everyone, year two is going to be the hardest of them all. We just have to keep grinding and stay the course and keep getting better. We’ve got to stop turning the ball over. The way to win in the ACC when you’re at that point in the major rebuild where you just don’t turn the ball over and make free throws. And turnovers have been our Achilles heel. Moving forward, we’re just going to have to do it no matter what the situation is. Any turnover, you just got to come right out in the first half automatically. Unless it’s obviously a shot clock violation or a team turnover otherwise. That’s what we were trying to do today a little bit but we’ve just got to be even more direct about that moving forward. But because that’s our biggest Achilles heel now, it’s just these turnovers are killing us. They have 17 points off of our turnovers in the first half. 24 in the game. But those first two turnovers in the first half, they had 17 points off those. That’s the difference right there. 16 turnovers and you just can’t do that. But we’re a young team, we’re trying to build and this is part of the process of our rebuild job.”
On Terrance Mann
“He was terrific tonight. He didn’t come in scoring like that. He had 21 in the first half; he was just kicking our butt and a lot of it was straight line drives. He’s a high-level player so you have to give him credit and he was on. With that being said, we could have withstood all that, just like we could’ve withstood many games this year. Some of these deficiencies and you look here, if you don’t turn the ball over. I’m just telling you to win in the ACC, don’t turn the ball over and you make free throws. Versus Notre Dame, our first loss, we didn’t turn the ball over but we were 7-18 on the free throw line. Versus Virginia, 18 turnovers. 15 turnovers versus North Carolina. We could survive Mann having 30 if we didn’t turn the ball over.”
On his team
“We have one point guard who we’re relying to play basically 40 minutes and that’s not an easy thing to do in the ACC. We’re relying on that and it’s a rebuild and it’s going to take us a little time to get multiple recruiting classes in. but our next phase of that is you turn it over in the first half, automatically out. You just got to come out. And we’ll just have to have musical chairs and try to see if that works.”
On defense
“I was really disappointed in our defense tonight, in the first half especially. We’ve spent the last two and half days just guarding, focusing on defense. We were an elite defensive team last year and that’s part of the reason we beat Florida State last year – it was all through our defense. And we were becoming a pretty good defensive team, but tonight we weren’t really good and part of that’s in turnovers. Because they were getting a lane on straight lane drives, and lot of it is just those turnovers. You don’t allow your defense to get set and this is part of the maturation process of our youth and our freshmen and they get down. We’ve got to move on to the next play and this is just part of him growing and learning. They hurt us on a lot of straight line drives. There was one where Brandon Allen came in and drove a straight line on Tadric Jackson and you just can’t have that. Mann straight line drove Josh Okogie – we just can’t have that. 25 (Mfiondu Kabengele) straight line drove Ben Lammers. You talk about five guys have to guard the basketball. It can’t be one guy. We’ve got to have the floor shrunk and compact and the opponent has to see bodies. Tonight, we were leaving guys on an island and that’s just bad defense. Of all our games this year, this is the one game where we were very individualized defensively. I felt we didn’t shrink the floor, five guys weren’t guarding the basketball and that’s what happens. We’re not in a position where we can be that extended. We got extended and we weren’t playing team defense, we were playing individualized defense and that’s a recipe for disaster.
“To begin, he’s our point guard. So that’s what we’re going with. There’s going to be some mistakes with him on his shot selection and it drives you up the wall. But that’s part of his maturation. It’s part of our rebuild as we try the rebuild of our program. You’re going to have to live with some things with him because we’re investing in him for the long haul. He’s a tough hardnosed kid, you know, young man, and so he takes some bad ones but he’s going to make some. It’s just part of the maturation process. He’s playing basically 40 minutes in the ACC and we don’t have a back-up; it’s just him.”
On the late 3-point shot by Braian Angola
“That was big. That was the nail on the coffin, that corner three.”
Florida State Head Coach Leonard Hamilton
Opening Statement
“The type of offensive system that Georgia Tech uses is extremely challenging for us because it has a little bit of the Princeton-type system that spreads the floor and makes it very difficult for you to make any defensive mistakes at all. And they have another system that’s similar to what they call the “spread offense” that Oregon uses, and they keep rotating between the system where they move the ball and they challenge every defensive person. Back cuts, back screens, penetrations and ball reversals. And it’s more of a pattern and it’s very difficult to overplay. The first half I thought our guys did an exceptionally good job of getting deflections and steals. We had quite a few points at halftime off of turnovers. And you don’t normally get a lot of deflections and steals on that type of system, so I thought our guys were locked in. I don’t think we played as well as we are capable of playing, but I think their system had a lot to do with it. I’m very happy to pull away with a victory. This was one of those typical ACC games – We were up by 10 at halftime. I thought that Ike went into the game and plugged the middle up and changed shots the first half and we were able to extend the lead. We got a couple turnovers, got some easy baskets. I knew they weren’t going to go away. I thought that when we came out the second half, they had a little bit more energy than us. We called a timeout and I thought our guys adjusted pretty well. We’ll look back at the end of the season and realize this was a very important game for us, because these guys are going to beat some people along the way.”
On Terance Mann being a stat-stuffer and his career day
“I made that comment when he was a freshman, that he was a stat-stuffer. And he’s becoming more and more of a stat-stuffer. But he’s improving in all areas. He has a high basketball IQ, he plays with a tremendous amount of effort and focus, and now he’s starting to talk and communicate with his teammates a lot more. I still think his best basketball is ahead of him. He’s improved his perimeter shot a lot, and he’s playing to his strengths right now. He’s a guy who’s making decisions, moving the ball well, defending well, and rebounding well. That’s what you like to see from a kid who is a diehard Seminole.”
On sharing the ball and playing team basketball…
“We had eight possessions in the second half where we passed the ball more than six times, and we scored on six of them. We moved the ball, made the extra pass, and created high-percentage shots. Some we drove to the basket, and we got some uncontested shots and our guys knocked them down. “We try to make as many passes as possible – I think we made over 220 passes tonight. And when you move the ball that well, you normally shoot a high percentage from the floor. We’d like to increase that a little bit. We’re a team that’s still evolving.”
On having a different guy step up from game to game…
“As I said at the beginning of the season, ‘We will win games by committee.’ The way our system is set up, we’ve had a lot of different guys be leading scorers because we try to move the ball and get everybody involved. And sometimes it’s CJ, sometimes it’s Mfiondu (Kabengele), sometimes it’s somebody else. If we can continue to keep playing that way, we’ll figure out how to take advantage of everybody’s strengths. We just have to involve our big guys a little bit more. It didn’t hurt us too much tonight because their big guys were in foul trouble as well. As we move forward, we need to have a little bit more of a balance inside and outside.”
On Florida State’s “go-to-guy”
“The go to guy on this team is the guy with the highest percentage shot. That’s the way I like it. It’s much more difficult to prepare for, and it’s a little more challenging as you prepare for a team when you have a lot of guys that are shooting high percentages, and guys who move the ball and take advantage of what the defense gives them.”
On the ACC and ACC play…
“Every win you get in the ACC is bigger than huge. If there’s such a thing. Because this is the new ACC. You’re glad and happy that you can celebrate any game you can win at all. We had a 16-point lead there for a minute. But this team was not going to go away. You see more hard-fought games; you see more teams at the top lose to the teams at the bottom – there are no more upsets. You just have to be clawing and scratching, and scratching and clawing, and try to win every game. Every team you play in the ACC will be capable of handing you your hat.”
