Colorado University Athletics
Colorado, Fort Lewis Quotes
November 12, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General- "I thought for the first game, the first time in front of fans, as a coach you never know what you can expect from your team. Defensively, I thought we really played well tonight, and that is one thing we challenged our players on. Overall, I was pleased with how we played, especially given how many new guys played, some that haven't played in quite some time in a college basketball game. The good thing is you can win by this margin and still have a lot of room for improvement.
On F Austin Dufault- "I thought Austin played well, and played with confidence. I thought both he and Nate (Tomlinson) gave us great stability on the court. I was really pleased with Austin's post defense, and we talked about guys having to step their roles up, and I don't know if Austin is going to get 18 (points) and 10 (rebounds) every night, but I'm not going to get mad at him if he does."
On Freshmen- "I thought the freshmen (Spencer Dinwiddie, and Askia Booker) showed some good things, they are both really talented young men, and I think they are going to be great players at Colorado. They do get frustrated, because they expect so much of themselves, I think Spencer got a little bit frustrated at times and got in some foul trouble in the first half. What I want our freshmen to do is learn every day. I want them to learn in practice, I want them to learn from tonight's experience, and I want them to learn tomorrow in our film session. That's the key with those guys, and I played them a lot tonight, they are going to need to play minutes for us."
On G Sabatino Chen- "I thought Sabatino was great, one of the things he does the best is cutting. He is our best cutter, and he had a really nice cut and score later in the game. Sabatino was aggressive tonight, and he can guard a lot of different positions for us. I thought he was effective in the minutes that he played."
On Where The Team Needs To Improve- "I think we need to continue to be rock solid defensively. But I think for us to get better, we need to improve our half-court offense. We did a lot of things off the dribble, and that is part of our gig. I also think we need to play without fouling more, we want to be the first team into the bonus both halves. We want to make more free throws than our opponent shoots. I think Fort Lewis let us off the hook a little tonight by missing some free throws, and good teams are going to make all those free throws."
On F Andre Roberson- "Everybody knows what he can do. He only had two offensive rebounds so I'm going to get on him about that. But I think Andre is a beast, and once we get our transition game going, that's the other thing we can improve on, I thought 17 turnovers was way too many. Andre is terrific though, he still is athletic and explosive which makes him such a great rebounder along with his nose for the ball he has, which makes him such a great rebounder."
On The Team's Depth- "I do think we have more depth on the perimeter, especially once we get Jeremy (Adams) back. I think we have a lot more balance. As this team grows and develops you will see players roles grow and develop as well. It will be a work in progress for this team, but if we can hang our hat on defense and rebounding were going to be fine as we grow and develop into those roles."
On Early Challenges Of The Schedules- "I would rather ease into the schedule, but we don't have that choice. The first two and a half weeks of the season we are going to learn a lot about our team and where we need to improve, but I would rather learn from winning than learn from losing. We can't judge this team this early on those things. We need to judge them on how were playing, who's playing well, and how we can improve."
On Importance Of A Balanced Offense- "I think our balance is going to be the key, we had some guys that were not in double figures (points) tonight that are capable of being in double figures, and that is a good thing for us. Again, as our roles get defined and we learn as we go, we need to develop. But the thing that I've said since day one that I like about this team is the fact that we are very balanced. We don't have one go-to guy and that is a good thing, but sometimes that won't be a good thing when we need a bucket. We will figure that out as we go though."
Fort Lewis College Head Coach Bob Hofman
General-"It was good to see a lot of people, I see guys like Scott Wedman and Cliff Meely. Guys that I played with back in the day, it was fun."
On Coaching On A Familiar Court
"Yeah, in fact I was the one that got the idea to dedicate it to him (Sox Walseth). For me, it was pretty cool because it was six decades of involvement with CU basketball. I played as a freshman in '69. So anyways it has been kind of neat, so I had a lot of memories obviously as a coach and player at CU. And then as a high school coach we played on, coached on this court and Balch court, my Fairview High School teams."
On How They Played Against A Division I Team
"I think we can get a lot better, we lost six seniors. Our program traditionally has been very good, and I appreciate Tad, and the last ten years in a 14 team league we've never been less than fourth. So this year we have a lot of new guys, and we'll get better. We have a couple young guys that will get a lot better. You know, CU, I thought they played really hard and I don't think we were quite ready for the speed of the game. I think that is something we can learn from, and that is important to us."
On C Matt Morris' Performance
"I think it was a combination of thing. Matt struggled, early in the game he got a foul called early on and I think he got frustrated which is the killer of any player. I think CU did a good job on their low post defense."
On G Matt Billups' Performance
"By the way he is related to Chauncey and the assistant coach, Rodney. He is related, how cool is that?
He is from New Mexico, correct. It's funny the story is that Matt Billups has been telling me about that for three years, that he is related, I said we'll have to get you up there and meet him sometime, because he's really wanted to meet him and they've never met. So yesterday they had a nice talk and they exchanged numbers, it was pretty cool.
He's a returning starter that we need a lot from. He was good. He has a whole different role this year. Like I said we lost six seniors and 85 percent of our scoring. I was very proud of him, he really stepped up. That was the one really silver lining of this game, that he played so well."
On What He Takes Away From Playing A Division I Team
"Well the one thing you got to prevent is getting beat by a lot. They look forward to it and then you lose by a pretty wide margin, you just got to look. Our transition defense has to get a lot better, and I think they showed, we can show on tape you have to block out, you have to get back you have to be structured. And I think they pushed our offense outside about three or four feet further than we wanted to be, and we'll learn from that. We would back cut and then we wouldn't, we would stop after we back-cut instead of widening out and getting someone else open. There are just so many things that we can get better on. In general I think it was a good experience for our team, we can learn from, we can get better from."
On Colorado's Performance
"Obviously, I don't' want to say his name incorrectly. [No.] 21 [Roberson] is a special player and I thought they moved the ball extremely well and they, one of Tad's things is they rebound. It doesn't matter who's coaching they are going to rebound. I thought they did a great job on the boards. And their free throw defense was tremendous."
On Whose Idea It Was To Play Colorado
"Actually it was, my assistant coach George Boedecker, they dedicated the thing (practice court) after him and I think he pretty much set it up. So it wasn't necessarily my idea, but I'm glad we did it."
On How He Feels
"Just relieved that it's over. I don't know, we can get better from this, so that's the main thing. And I'm just glad it's over with, and we can get back to trying to get better and play basketball. So it was fun."
Colorado Student-Athletes
Austin Dufault, Senior, Forward
On The Team's Fast Start - "You always want to get off to a good start. I think our team definitely did that tonight and we got up and down."
On Fort Lewis - "They're a very good team, you got to give them a lot of credit. They had a couple little runs in the beginning but I think we sustained well."
On Fort Lewis' Offensive Rebounding - "We usually had four guys boxing out, but that fifth guy wasn't and the ball got tipped out. We got to have five guys boxing out. If one guy falls asleep, it opens up a lot of opportunity. I feel collectively at times we tried to rebound but there were spots in there where one or two guys snuck in and got a board."
On Colorado's Offensive Rebounding - "Our guards got up the floor and they were taking perimeter shots and they were great shots. But we knew that if they didn't knock them down we were going to try to do everything we could to get the ball back for us and try to put it back in. It was a good team effort crashing the boards tonight."
On Fort Lewis G Matt Billups' Performance - "He's a great player, he played well tonight but you can't take away from his nice night but our guards will step up and stay in front of them better."
On The Excitement Surrounding Colorado Basketball - "I mean it's great, just going to class and talking to kids that are interested in the program. There's just a lot of interest in our team just carrying over from last year. With more people interested in us, we have an extra responsibility to our fans to play hard every night."
On The Upcoming Puerto Rico Tournament - "I'm excited. There's some great teams down there. It's the third island trip I've taken in four years so that's exciting. I'm just looking forward to playing the good competition that's going to be down there and just showing what our team's going to be like this year and hopefully we can improve every game."
Andre Roberson, Sophomore, Guard
On Filling the Void Left by Last Year's Players - "I feel like it's important for everyone to step up, not just on offense, but also on defense. I see [Alec Burks] sitting over there in the stands. It's definitely weird you know."
On Improving His Game - "Yeah, definitely. I feel like I need to. I worked on my shot a lot during the summer and kind of carried it over into the game."
On Fort Lewis G Matt Billups' Performance - "I feel like it's not [cause for concern]. It's just a group effort, just trying to keep the guards, try to stay in front of them and try to contain them. If we do that, we'll have success guarding the guards from the opposing teams. He's a great player."
On The Freshmen - "They did well. I feel like they'll improve throughout the season, they still got to learn some stuff. They still got to adjust to college level basketball but they'll learn pretty quickly. They're pretty good at that. They held their own and they'll continue to progress."
