Colorado University Athletics
Colorado-Prairie View A&M Quotes
December 19, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
GENERAL ? “Coming off a nine day layoff with finals and spotty practice time and location, with players coming in and out of practice because of study sessions and tutors, I am very happy with how we came out of the gate. I thought we were pretty active for the most part. We didn't handle the press very well and we weren't very sharp. We turned the ball over too much, we just have to keep working hard and continuing to get better.
“What we get out of it is all of these guys are getting as much court time as they can. All of these guys need experience and getting out there in front of people and playing is how you gain experience period.”
ON PLAYING WITH CONFIDENCE?“Yes, that is very important. The only way you can gain confidence is to experience confidence, just like it was with experience, the only way to get it is to get it. It is how you grow and we need to grow.”
ON GOING TO HAWAI'I?“It's about us. Hawai'i is Hawai'i and if we're too immature to know that then that is a problem. The only thing that matters is tomorrow's practice. That's how we'll develop into what we want to be in the future.”
Prairie View A&M Head Coach Byron Rimm II
GENERAL ? “This is the worst game we've played all year. We only lost to UCLA by 21 and we lost at Missouri by 18. We usually play much better than this, but that comes down to having to play two freshmen today. I think we hit a wall because of break. We had a game on Wednesday and we have another game on Sunday. We've been on the road a lot. So we've been playing virtually every other day, away from home. We're going to break down film tomorrow and show the guys what we need to work on.”
“We had a lot of stuff going on tonight. A lot of sick guys. The center that started tonight isn't our normal center, so we lacked confidence. We gambled a lot because we have a small team. CU was making a lot of back-door cuts and we only gave up two back-doors in the second half. We had nine guys tonight and a lot of them were thinking about Christmas break. I think fatigue played a role; we have played a lot of games on the road recently. We had young guys shoot who don't usually shoot the ball.”
ON DEFENSE ? “Our off-ball defense was terrible. They were getting a lot of back-door looks. Our backside defense was lazy. The guys think when they're off-ball they can relax. We had good on-ball defense and we did a good job of fighting through screens.”
ON TONIGHT'S SCRATCHES ? “We had a guy who just became eligible, but we couldn't get him cleared before we left. Our starting center, Tarrence Garrison, who is 6'8, messed up his knee last night against New Mexico State and we had to send him back. Donald Bell, who is 6'3, didn't play because of personal reasons. We also had another guy, Terrance Moore, who just became eligible, but our athletic director was out of town and we couldn't get him cleared.”
ON FULL COURT PRESS IN THE SECOND HALF ? “We have a smaller team. We had a lot of guys who are 6'2, 6'3 so we had to gamble. We played a lot of full court press tonight in the second half. We got a lot of steals because we gambled.”
Colorado PLayers
Cory Higgins, Sophomore, Guard
ON STRONG FIRST HALF ? “It was definitely good to put them away in the first half. But the game is 40 minutes like coach said, so we cannot take the second half off like that. Better teams can get right back in the game.”
ON SECOND HALF PLAY ? “We did not necessarily take the second half off, but there were little things that we did not execute on. We had a lot more turnovers in the second half. I think our focus was not there the entire time. We just did not play as well as we should have.”
Jermyl Jackson-Wilson, Senior, Forward
ON FIRST GAME AFTER FINALS ? “It is a chance to not have nine days of practice in a row. You beat up on yourselves for so long, so it is good to play someone else. It is good to get that competitive edge back. And to come out of the game with a win it helps build your confidence. We need all the competition we can get especially going into this tournament in Hawai'i, but first we have to take care of Louisiana-Monroe. Hopefully we can go into conference with a couple wins under our belt.”
ON EFFECT OF THE TCU LOSS ? “That TCU game left a real sour taste in our mouth, and I can still taste it. It was a bad game for us, and you never want to feel like you after any loss, but that game was different. You never want to have that feeling again. We played a good first half, but need to make it 40 minutes. Any win we can get, and build off of that TCU loss is always good.”
ON PLAY OF THE FRESHMEN ? “I notice them gaining confidence. At the beginning of the season we knew that the offense worked, but now the defense is getting better. The freshmen are noticing that when we play defense we are a much better team. They are noticing that it is not always about putting the ball in the hole, obviously you have to put the ball in hole, but when we get rebounds and play defense we have a good outcome.”
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