Colorado University Athletics
Colorado, Wyoming Quotes
December 10, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General- "That was a disappointing loss. Wyoming came in here and took it from us, they beat us fair and square and we didn't do what we had to do to win this game, but we have to learn from it and move on. The good news is that we have 10 days between now and our next game, and we need to get better; but the bad news is that we have to live with this feeling in our stomach for the next 10 days and we just have to get better."
On What Fueled Wyoming's Long Run- "What fueled it was our turnovers. Turnovers are the first pass to the fast break, and they got a few in transition, but it was us not taking care of the ball. Our defense was just not good enough during crunch time, when we needed to get stops we were not good enough. We made some silly mistakes that cost us the game as well. We turned the ball over fifteen times. What is hard for a coach when your coaching a team that is inconsistent, is to find the right combinations, finding the right guys on the right night, and I was searching tonight. But we have a lot of guys that are capable to play better, I have to coach better. What is frustrating to me is how we practiced yesterday and how we played today. We didn't play the way we practiced."
On Playing Three Freshmen At A Time- "I think freshmen are going to make mistakes and I know that. That's the difference between being a senior and being a freshman. The patience level as a coach is a lot less when a senior is making mistakes, that freshmen are making, my expectations with my seniors is a lot higher than with the freshmen."
On Wyoming's Big Men- "They are good. We knew they were good. Washington is a load down there, he is highly recruited player and we knew that coming in. They are all great post defenders. It started with Martinez in the second half getting loose and our scouting report on Martinez was be there on his catch and make him be a driver and he wipes three three pointers right over us, we have to make him put it on the floor. Washington stayed down on his pump fakes, he's getting to the rim and we are fouling him. We have to do a better job with that."
On The Maturity Level Of The Team- "I have to get that under control as a coach, and I will. I didn't' put Nate Tomlinson back in the game (after his technical foul) but Nate has to play better, he has to control his emotions and have better body language and tonight wasn't one of his better nights and I'll leave it at that. But I have to do a better job at coaching Nate."
On Spencer Dinwiddie's Performance- "I thought he did a great job staying on (Luke) Martinez, he stayed with him for the majority of the second half he did a great job defensively and he had zero turnovers. Spencer takes care of the ball and for the most part makes good decisions. Now he had zero assists and only five as a team which means we are not creating plays for other people, we are trying to create plays for ourselves and we have to get better at that whether it is zone or man (defense) it doesn't matter."
On Struggling with The Zone Defense- "Well I thought we have got to handle the ball better when we get it inside, I thought we missed some easy shots and bunnies, and my whole thing is we have to play inside out. We have to make the zone collapse on our big guys and then when it collapses we need to get it kicked out and our guys need to step up and knock down those shots. We have a good three point team so we should be able to tear some zones apart. Right now we are not playing together, we are not playing zone offense in the game like we play zone offense in practice. What we had on our board tonight was; play together, play loose, take care of the ball offensively. That is what you have to do against a zone."
On The Teams Negative Body Language- "I don't know why it happens, when kids come here they are eighteen and nineteen and they have their personalities well set, and you are not going to change those. What we try and do is change behavior and with a couple of our guys I haven't done a good enough job at that. You can't change their personality, but you can talk to them about it. I know what the problem is and it's now my job to figure out how to solve it. That is my job as a coach. When things start going south we need to be able to pick it up and start going north and right now we just can't do that. We can do it game to game, but what we need to figure out is how to do it during a game. We have to figure it out."
On Missing Old Players- "Well here is the deal, Levi is not here, Cory is not here and Alec is not here so that is a moot point. But what we have to do is we have to be mature enough and understand that when we are turning it over and we aren't shooting the ball well and we are missing some bunnies that we have to again not let that effect the other end of the floor. We have to figure out how you win this game fifty four to fifty three and right now we are not there yet. I want this program is going to be known for there defense and rebounding Wyoming's defense was better than Colorado's and we didn't rebound the ball well enough tonight and that is why we lost the game. We are not there yet."
Wyoming Head Coach Larry Shyatt
General- "That was a great game. I'm really happy for our guys. They mixed the pot all night. I didn't think we took control of the game early second half, but I thought they stayed connected like they needed to and got some good stops."
On the turning point of the game- "I'm hoping fatigue was a factor, because we couldn't do anything inside the entire first 25-30 minutes, but I thought down the home stretch, Leonard Washington and Adam Waddell got their way inside, which is a product of conditioning."
On Adam Waddell's change in play from the first to the second half- "We talked about staying the course and enjoying the process and making sure that no run disrupted our connectedness. I think our big guys did a great job down the home stretch, but our guards got us in the game for a long period of time."
On the difference in play during the second half- "Offensively I thought that sometimes we weren't so pretty. I thought the difference in the game was the other end. We eliminated a lot of easy looks and we really cleaned up a lot of second shots. There were a lot of 50-50 balls, and I thought we got our share of those."
"I think Washington and Waddell sort of traded off those last 7 or 8 minutes. When we needed to go and get down and dirty inside, he brought it to us."
On significance of their winning streak- "I think streaks mean a lot to the media and they are terrific for fans. This team has not lost 24 in a row. This team is in the process of trying to write their own script. How the script will go, no one knows. But up to this point, they are writing their own script and it has nothing to do with the past. But it is fun to talk about."
On the defense only giving up 54 points- "I really wasn't sure if we were going to be able to do it after watching them against Fresno; they flew up the floor. We are never sure, that's why we play the games."
On the mindset of the team- "I know that these guys have bought into being aggressive, disciplined, and most of all unselfish. I don't know where that takes us. I told the guys to enjoy this on the bus ride. You can use this victory to catapult into another sphere, or, you can allow this victory to use you. How we handle this tomorrow in practice and in our next game will tell the story."
On the defensive play- "I'm very proud of the team in general. I told them after the game that I am even more proud of our white team, our second team, that work their tails off every day; they are getting better and they are making our older guys get better. They might have not got the glory tonight, but they know inside that they're pushing them and they're getting better."
On tonight's line-up- "We used Bouedo a little bit, we used Gilmore at the two. You're trying to avoid foul trouble. They did a good job. I didn't think we were too pretty and I'm sure Colorado, probably at that point, did not think they were playing pretty. But it was a good slug fest, a 30-30 halftime game."
On the win- "They're all important. This win was really important to our players. This game had the feel of a Mountain West road game and I think that's good for our players. There were times when the gym was extremely loud and I think that's a good exercise for our team at this point."
Spencer Dinwiddie, Freshman, Guard
On hitting several long threes towards the end of the game - "It wasn't too late. We had plenty of time. We were only down by six, we just didn't get stops. We came down and turned the ball over."
On the loss - "It is pretty evident what happened. We scored 24 points in the second half, they scored 35. Our defense got worse, theirs got better. One of their guys had five steals. We shouldn't let them get five steals when they are in a zone."
On making improvements - "There's a laundry list. We have to rebound. It can't just be Andre [Roberson] rebounding. No one on the team had over four rebounds, and Andre had 12. The team has to rebound, it can't just be one guy. We shot a poor percentage. There's a list of things we need to work on."
On struggling against the zone - "We have people that can shoot, and we have people that can drive. When the zone slows us down, we tend to have trouble. It seems like when we're playing at a faster pace, we have less turnovers, and when we're playing at a slower pace we have more. There's no excuse for that."
Carlon Brown, Senior, Guard
On the second half - "Our defense wasn't playing as well as we could have. We couldn't get rebounds when we needed to get rebounds, which led to them getting second chance points. We turned the ball over too much on offense. We didn't do anything solid."
On the seven minute scoreless streak in the second half - "You want to try to figure out what's going on without burning a timeout. We're brought here to make plays in pressure situations. We didn't have the energy we needed to have in the second half. We didn't have the emotion, or the intensity."
On the team's 10-day break - "I think it gives us a chance to regroup, but at the same time we all want to play. That's why we have these practices, to prepare for games like this. We just didn't come out. We'll learn, we'll watch film and hopefully we'll get better."
