Colorado University Athletics
Colorado-Oklahoma Quotes
February 09, 2008 | Men's Basketball
CU Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik
GENERAL ? “I am very happy for our players and for the fans. My players fought hard and worked hard. We have been competitive in most of our games this year and were unable to complete them, but today we completed one, and I am very happy for the players.”
ON SHOOTING 61% FROM THE FIELD ? “We executed really well today, and were consistent. I think that we handled their zone well, and had some good looks. We set good screens and executed our back doors. The shot distribution was also good, and that gave us good balance. I saw a lot of improvement out there today.”
ON DEFENDING BLAKE
ON TEAM'S EFFORT ? “We know that we are limited in size, but I told the guys that we don't need to ourselves in hustle, passion, and enthusiasm. There s no skill involved in those things, and they mean so much to a team. Hopefully they are getting it, and today they got it for 40 minutes.”
OU Head Coach Jeff Capel
GENERAL ? “I didn't have to look at the stat sheet to know we didn't play defense. We were just bad in every aspect?coaching, being ready to play, everything. It was embarrassing. We weren't ready to play. We couldn't guard them without fouling them. We weren't focused and we just weren't ready to play.”
ON NEEDNG A WIN?“I don't believe in must wins, but this was one we wanted to win. I don't know if this loss hurt our guys and it needs to hurt. Nothing will change unless it hurts. This is the most embarrassing thing I've been a part of.”
GENERAL -“We just finished out the game. We've been here before a lot of times. We didn't say anything about it; we just knew what we had to do. We just had to survive their run, and we did that. We made our free throws and finished out the game.”
ON REBOUNDING - “You know they are big down there. There were a lot of long rebounds that went over our head; sometimes the ball just doesn't bounce our way.”
ON BLAKE
GENERAL -“I wasn't really to worried about them, I was worried about what we were going to do in the second half and we came out strong and made those first couple shots and I know that gave us confidence throughout the whole second half.”
?”We got good looks, we have been getting good looks all year. We finished most of our lay-ups today which is a first, and made open shots from the three point line.”
GENERAL -“We just stuck with it. In the past sometimes we kind try and tend to try and get away from it. We got a couple good looks under 10 seconds, and we just stuck with it.”
GENERAL -“I mean we have been and this position before, and the only way you get better is to learn from it. We have been in this position 3 or 4 times this year, and we finally learned from it, and we stood their charge and made a charge of our own.”
ON FREE THROW SHOOTING - “I mean coach has been on us about that, we haven't been a bad free throw shooting team, it's just when we miss them everybody misses them it seems like. Today everybody stepped up and made them”
ON CU DEFENSE - “I think defensively we rotate pretty well. We have been working on that for the last two days, even on Thursday we didn't even practice offense we just practiced on rotating on defense. The rotation was almost as good as it gets from every team, and we just stuck with that.”
ON GAINING CONFIDENCE FROM THIS WIN -“We just got to take game by game I guess. We know we can play with any team; we have played with every team thus far. We just got to keep learning how to keep fighting and play a 40 minute game.”
ON CONFIDENCE -“I'm always focused when I'm out there. The last couple of games I had some open looks like I did tonight and they weren't going down. I know my teammates had confidence in me. They kept telling me to shoot in practice. I was making shots in practice so I knew it would come around.”
GENERAL -“When I have an open shot and my teammates want me to shoot it that is when I shoot it. If someone closes down on me I'm going to kick it to my teammate just like they would to me. If I have an open look that is the shot I am going to take.”
Blake Griffin
GENERAL?“We basically came in and couldn't get stops on the defensive end. You have to give them credit for doing what they wanted to do on offense. We were a step slow and they played really well. Our whole team is in a slump right now with these last three games. It was a very tough loss?we need every game.”
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