Colorado University Athletics
Colorado, Fresno State Quotes
December 08, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General-"We won the game. I know it doesn't seem like it by the energy. I told our players after the game that there was a time in Colorado Basketball history where we beat Fresno State by seven at home and you walk in the locker room and guys are chest bumping and high fiving and celebrating, and we didn't have any of that in our locker room tonight which shows me that the expectation level of our players, of our coaches and even our fans is a little higher than that. I was really pleased with our first half performance, we had not seen zone a lot this year and I think again that was a learning curve for our team, we have worked on it in practice but have not seen it in a game and it took us a while to get a feel for it."
On Closing Out The Game At The Free Throw Line-"Just like our Western Michigan win in Peurto Rico we did a great job like tonight at the free throw line. I believe in this team and our players, and they stepped up tonight and did what they had to do at the free throw line, I was really proud of them for that."
On Andre Roberson's Performance-"Great. Andre was dialed in from the start. He was mentally into the game tonight and you could just tell that he was going to have a good game just the way he got going. Hopefully it doesn't take him to hit a couple jumpers every game to feel that way, but I think that definitely helped his "mojo". I was really proud of him."
On Inconsistency-"You saw it from the first half to the second half, you saw it at the free throw line, you saw it from the CSU game to tonight. When we become a consistent team that plays as hard and executes for forty minutes we will be good."
On Jeremy Adams-"Jeremy is going to be a key player for us as we progress through this season. He played 22 minutes, he was very efficient. The think I love about Jeremy is that there are no turnovers in the stat sheet and for me turning the ball over 17 times is way too many. I thought Jeremy gave us some good minutes both offensively and defensively. I thought he was very efficient in his minutes tonight."
On Their Free Throw Performance-"Free throw shooting is an individual thing and can obviously become a team thing. But I attribute it to the guys stepping up and making them in a game. I just want to make sure that we do that on a consistent basis, and we have proven that we can."
On Spencer Dinwiddie's Late Three-pointer-"He has got to shoot the ball when he is open. Spencer played well tonight and with freshmen they are going to be up and down, I want them to shoot the ball when they are open and when they have their feet set. We need guys to make shots and we only shot 40 percent in the second half and I thought a lot of it was our tentativeness."
On Damiene Cain-"I was pleased with his game. The thing I like about Damiene is he gets down there and wants the ball and demands the ball, and what I like about our team is that they look for him and they want to give him the ball down low because they know good things will happen and they know he is not a black hole; he will kick it out when he has to. I was pleased with Damiene's minutes. He is so strong and has that big rear end and he knows how to use it and I like our guys looking for him. Damiene is just going to get better and better the more he practices and the more he plays."
On Trusting Andre Roberson With Four Fouls-"I have a lot of trust. We also put Sabatino [Chen] in to make sure he didn't foul out. We tried to go offense-defense but the last couple minutes we had to play him because he is such a good rebounder. We have to learn how to rebound the ball without Andre. We are going to play against guys that are bigger than Dufault, and Harris-Tunks so we need to figure out how to rebound without Andre."
On Rebounding And Boxing Out-"That is what we work on in practice, is not watching the ball. When a shot goes up I want our guys looking to get bodies on people and create space with our box-outs and we didn't do that very well the second half. They out rebounded us in the second half which is unacceptable which I told our players that."
On Playing Two Games In Three Days-"It's going to have to be good because it is the way it's scheduled and it is the way our league plays. We play in the Pac-12, we are going to play Thursday Saturday games. That is one of the reasons we scheduled in this preseason the way we did is to try to get us ready for conference play. Whether it's good or bad; that's immaterial because that's how we are going to play in the league so we have to figure it out now."
On Nate Tomlinson And Spencer Dinwiddie Playing The High Post-"Yeah we put both Spencer and Nate up there at the high post. They went with a small lineup so we went with a small lineup zone. So we wanted to put a play maker in that position to get them the ball. I just thought our penetration this game wasn't very good, we penetrated around the zone rather than into zone and we have to get better at that, which was a lack of aggressiveness on our part. We want to play inside-out, we want to get the ball down low, when we did that we had some good results but we just didn't do that consistently enough."
On Disappointing End Of The First Half-"I was really disappointed in the last minute of the first half, they went to zone and 0.7 seconds left on the clock and we are switching every screen and we have a guy with the ball and we break down and don't switch on the screen and we lose three points right there. The first thing we talked about at halftime was don't play the scoreboard, play the possession on both sides of the ball and we did not do that the second half so yes I was mad after that. It wasn't something we didn't talk about but sometimes all you can do as a coach is talk, they have to take it out in the floor and do it and they did not do it in the second half."
Fresno State Head Coach Rodney Terry
On halftime adjustments-"We knew coming in that we were going to be playing a good offensive team. We didn't do a great job of getting set on defense. You have to give Colorado credit though. They did what they have been practicing. We didn't do what we practiced in the first half, but we had better execution in the second half and did the things we work and practice on. The adjustment in terms of the change up with the zone was good for us."
On starting the game flat-"We have dug ourselves into some holes in previous games. I thought that in our last two previous games, we had taken a step as a team in a better direction as far as starting goes. But we took a step back today. But, I credit a lot of what Colorado did. They did what they work on everyday and the way they play in terms of their transition offense. Tad [Boyle] had them ready to play."
On the loss-"Our program will always be about winning games. It's not about moral victories, or being close, we are playing to win. I thought our guys fought hard and played hard. We are a well conditioned team. We know if we would have gotten back and got our defense set more and executed our plays better on offense, we would have had a chance."
On the game being close-"We had opportunities. Like I told our guys, it wasn't so much the missed opportunities at the end of the game, it was those missed opportunities at the start of the game. The start was when we lost the game, not at the end."
On having a short bench-"Our guys are well conditioned. On any given night we know someone is going to step in and help us. We don't have to count on one player, we have a team, we don't have individuals. I thought we hung tough. We competed until the end, but it still wasn't good enough in terms of the outcome."
Andre Roberson, Sophomore, Guard
On the offensive mentality - "I think we shared the ball a lot more tonight."
On gaining confidence from tonight's win - "It gives me a lot of confidence to go out there and play the way I expect myself to play. I have high expectations for myself, as well as others on the team. I always try to go out there and play as hard as I can."
On finishing strong - "I think it is really important that we work on playing the full 40 minutes. We can't get comfortable with ourselves. We've got to work on that in practice."
Spencer Dinwiddie, Freshman, Guard
On playing well down the stretch - "I had an open shot, so I took it. It felt good to make it. Whenever you have an open shot, you have to step up and make it. Whenever you get a good look, you have to take the shot."
On Fresno State G Kevin Olekaibe - "He is a very good player. He is very quick. He shoots well and makes free throws."
On how the game ended - "I think that we just gave up too many open shots and they began to play with an 'us against the world' mentality. We made too many mental mistakes and gave up open shots. You just can't do that at the end of games when a team is hot. We needed to buckle down, make some stops, make our free throws. We did that."
Nate Tomlinson, Senior, Point Guard
On adjusting to Fresno State's defense - "I think we did a really good job when they were in man -to-man. We were moving the ball around and I think they couldn't defend us. Then they went zone and we haven't seen a lot of zone this year so that was new for us. We did a good job, we were just kind of hesitant and we missed a couple of easy shots."
On making free throws at the end of the game - "It felt good. I was proud of the boys. That is what we practiced on all week. I'm just glad we made them, or else we would have been in here late tonight practicing them a lot more."
On improving free throw shooting - "We had to shoot 500 each and then Coach Boyle had us do a shooting drill in practice where if we didn't make the free throw, we had to run. The key is just repetition and confidence, and we had confidence tonight."
Fresno State's Kevin Olekaibe, Sophomore, Guard
On keeping the game close-"We just tried to keep playing hard. We got down in the first half and gave away 21 points in transition. If we played how we did in the second half, I think it would have been a different game. "
On starting flat-"That's been a story the whole year for us; we need to change that. We have to go harder in warm-ups and do something different."
On halftime adjustments-"We started executing, which is something that we need to do all the time. Our bench also played well in the second half. It felt like everyone was all in and we were just playing team ball."
On missed opportunity-"It feels like a missed opportunity. We fought back. They kept not wanting to shoot the ball and we kept battling back. We just came up short. We just have to rest, learn from this game, and start preparing for our next game."
On the loss-"It's a pretty tough loss. Our coach was on us, telling us we can't start off like that. He got into us, so I don't think this will happen again."
On Coach Terry's attitude-"It feels like he's fighting for us. This was his first technical of the year. Him getting that showed that we needed to push even harder; that's what we did, we just came up short."
