Colorado University Athletics
Colorado, California Quotes
March 19, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General-"I would like to start by saying how darn proud I am of our guys for setting a school record with 23 wins. We set a standard now that future teams can hold themselves too as they start the season. 23 wins and we are not done yet. 108 years of basketball at the University of Colorado so it is a pretty special accomplishment for these young men. We talked about it before the game, and I thought they were pretty dialed in. They should be proud of themselves. I thought our fans were great, it was just a great night for Colorado basketball."
On if the large crowd surprised him-"It really did. I was blown away by the support. Obviously, these guys are easy to rally around right now after what we've been through this week. The way we've responded to it is a testament to their character, but it is also a testament to our fans and how loyal they have been all year long. Especially since Big 12 play started."
On Cory Higgins-"He's been playing at a really high level. He and Alec have put this team on their shoulders. We had a little bit more balance tonight in our scoring, we played a lot of zone the last two games and we handled it pretty well. We didn't shoot it real well in the first half. It's amazing, we had zero turnovers at halftime and I was just told that our first turnover came on our 50th possession. It tells you that we are taking care of the basketball on the offensive end. That is a pretty special stat right there."
On being impressed with the character of the team-"Absolutely, we talked on Monday that life is all about choices, and a lot of time it is not what happens to you in life, but how you respond to it and how you react to it. That was a challenge that we kind of gave our guys saying, 'Hey, let's choose to use this as a rallying cry and an opportunity to show that we belong.' The way that we've been playing, we certainly do. The way we've been playing in the Big 12 Tournament, we certainly do. The way that we've been playing at the end of the regular season, we certainly do, and we had an opportunity to play in a tournament which is what we set out to do when this thing started back in mid-October."
On when the message sank in with the players-"Monday's practice. Monday's practice could have been just a heads down [time], but they came out and they competed. There was no hang over on Monday, so I knew after Monday's practice that we would be ok."
On Nate Tomlinson's status-"I have no idea where he is at. He ran into a pretty solid pick right there. I don't know if his shoulder popped out, he didn't dislocate it, but it was a slight separation. I think that is what Trey told me, but I don't have any updates."
On Shannon Sharpe-"Shannon I thought has been playing well. He's been playing well at practice and playing confident and aggressive, and he had good minutes tonight. If Nate can't go then we are going to need some minutes out of Shannon, certainly. We got into some foul trouble tonight from Cory [Higgins] and Levi [Knutson] which we are not used to dealing with from the wing spot. Usually, it is our bigs that get into foul trouble, but it was our wings today. We kind of had to battle through that in the first half. We took care of the ball which is good. We were up three at halftime, but I felt that we should have been up by 10."
On Cal's run at the end of the first half-"There was a couple of transitions. Two of them were out of bounds under. We've been a great obe under team all year long. They went with a big lineup and we went with a zone because they had two shooters on the floor. Your zone should be able to cover two shooters, but we didn't do a very good job of it obviously. Some of that is on us, but they made some deep three's and open three's, but we weren't contesting them. That is where I was frustrated."
On the significance of Cal losing Jorge Gutierrez in the second half-"It was a big blow. He is the heart and soul of that team. When he went down - you never want to see a great player go down obviously, but it was advantage Colorado at that point because he is very important to them. He scored 16 points in the first half, and he ended up with 16 so we kind of shut him down. In the early part of the second half when he went down, they were in trouble."
On playing Gutierrez and other young Cal players next year in the Pac-12-"They are going to be good. They have the freshman of the year in the Crabbe kid. They have Harper Kamp, who is one of the better low post players around, and they have Jorge, who I think is the best player in college basketball that no one has heard of or talked about because he can really play and I have a lot of respect for him."
On the advantage with their next opponent having a quick turnaround-"It definitely plays to our advantage, but again we have to rest up a little. We have to be ready to play whoever we play on Tuesday because obviously Fairfield and Kent State have proven that they can go on the road and win and go on the road and beat good teams. Colorado State is a good team; St. Mary's is a good team. They are going to come in here, whoever it is, is going to come in here and expect to win so we'll have to be ready to go. And we will be."
On if he's ever been to Madison Square Garden-"I played there as I think an 18 year old freshman at the University of Kansas and it was one of the highlights of my basketball career, playing in that venue. I talked about that with our players when this thing started; it is a great venue for college basketball, the history in that building. I grew up when the Knicks were great with DeBusschere, Bradley, Frazier, Monroe, Dick Barnett. I loved the Knicks growing up and Madison Square Garden is the Mecca. The Big East holds their tournament there for a reason, it is a special place. It will be a great opportunity for our guys, but we are not there yet. That is the carrot that is dangling out there. Tonight's carrot was 23 wins and putting ourselves in the history books of Colorado basketball. Tuesday's carrot is going to be Madison Square Garden."
California Head Coach Mike Montgomery
On Jorge Gutierrez's injury-"He fell and sprained his ankle, then hit somebody's knee with his head, so he got a double-whammy. The ankle part was sore, but knowing Jorge he would have come back in and played. But the concussion part, and I'm not sure it was a concussion, but it was iffy enough that we weren't going to risk that. That was really unfortunate, both for him being home in Colorado and for us; we had gotten back to eight. There have been three or four things that have been constants for us. One is Markhuri Sanders-Frison who dislocated his shoulder Tuesday, and the other of course is Jorge. Now we're down both of them and at that point, there's nothing we can do."
General-"Higgins hurt us start of the second half, hit three threes. The second one, shame on us. We should have recognized he made and we didn't get out to him, then he ran to the corner and we got screened. We've got a lot of inexperienced players, so it's really been critical for us. I mean our leading scorer [Allen Crabbe] is a freshman and he's been really good, he didn't have a very good game tonight. Colorado did a very good job of recognizing him and taking him out. We got it down to eight and we've been in that situation a lot of times, so you can't count us out. This is a really resilient group of kids, but you look around and my point guard has got four fouls so he can't really defend. Then I have freshman, freshman, walk-on out there, so it was a tough situation. That being said, Colorado did a good job. We didn't defend them well at the point of attack, so they got to the line a lot, and we did a terrible job of blocking off the boards. They got 16 offensive rebounds, which was one of the things we tried to talk about, but with really one day and that day being 45 minutes of talking, walking, and shooting a little bit, we didn't really have a chance to really go back and work on [our game plan]. That was kind of an Achilles' heel for us and it came back to bite us."
On intentional foul on Emerson Murray-"He was turned around. One, we turn it over so that leads to a breakaway. In the official's opinion it was an intentional foul, so that's the end of that story. Whether it was or not, maybe in some other eyes it was. We thought he went with one hand. The kid is a freshman from Canada who's the nicest kid, so he wouldn't you know. It turned out to be a six-point play which was huge given the circumstances. There were a lot of little things that we didn't do that we needed to do. We left [Levi] Knutson open in the corner on an out-of-bounds play. Both people said, 'I got him,' and neither guarded him. Just little things like that; we made enough mistakes to lose the game. To Colorado's credit, their crowd was good and I think they're going to head to New York."
On scheduling of game being a disadvantage-"Well, we were fourth in our conference and didn't have a bad year. The team we tied with went to the NCAAs. We ended up getting a four-seed, so the only thing that surprised me was a two-day turnaround. We played Wednesday night. I would have thought that the Wednesday night teams play on maybe Saturday or Sunday and the Tuesday teams would have played on Friday. It was a little bit of a surprise. We were up at five o'clock on Thursday morning, but once you get here, all of that goes out the window. For one you're on the road and Colorado is 16-2 at home so you know you have a tough opponent to start with. You also very little time to prepare and get your wits about you, so it was a tough turnaround. That's the difference between the NCAA and the NIT, the NIT you're going to be on somebody's court. It's not neutral, then the turnarounds are dictated I guess by television. They wanted a game for Friday night and picked this one."
Colorado Student-Athletes
On being one win away from the NIT Championship game in New York City-"Obviously we have to stay focused on that game, but we've come a long way and I think we've responded to adversity really well. I knew that this group would, so we will come and take care of business on Tuesday and enjoy a trip to New York."
On paying attention to the NCAA Tournament games in Denver-"I've been trying to stay focused on our team and this tournament. Like Alec [Burks] said, we're not in it."
On Cory Higgins' steal, slam dunk and foul in the second half being a turning point-"There were a lot of plays. Forty minutes is a long time. We made runs and they made counter-runs. There were a lot of big plays. That was a way for us to separate ourselves in the second half."
On Shannon Sharpe's ability to potentially replace Nate Tomlinson if his shoulder injury keeps him out-"He's been playing aggressive and that's what we need from him. I hope Nate is OK because we need him out there, but I think Shannon is ready to step up and willing to step up if Nate can't go."
On handling disappointment of not making the NCAA Tournament-"We just got over it. We're not in it, so you have to move forward. We just got ready for this tournament. When they say you're not in it, you're not in it. You can't sit there and pout about it, that's not going to make you get in it. Keep moving forward. That's what being a man is about."
On breaking Cliff Meely's record-"I didn't know anything about it until someone said something about it. That's great to have a record in the CU history books."
On his reaction to Shannon Sharpe's dunk-"I thought it was crazy. I knew he could do that stuff since he got here. Everybody got to see it like I have. I knew he was capable of that."
On playing in the postseason-"It's always fun playing a game of basketball. A lot of people don't get to play anymore. A lot of people are hurt and their season is over."
On defensive adjustments made in the second half-"We just had to get back in transition. They got a lot of three's in transition. They shot 6-for-10, so they were hot too. Guys were hitting them from deep, so we just had to get out on them, find them in transition and in the half court and make sure we chased them out even past the three-point line. We just needed to find them and get back in transition."
On Cal's 9-0 run in the second half-"We knew we had to get the shooters and that's the main thing that they were doing was knocking them down. We just had to tighten our defense. We got a lot of offensive rebounds there too in the second half. There was a stretch when they had a lot of and-one's. We just had to tighten up and focus on playing good defensively and rebounding."
On being held scoreless in the first game of the NIT against Texas Southern-"I just haven't been playing well lately. Tonight I wanted to come out and be more aggressive. I had been being kind of passive lately on both end of the floor. That's how I was picking up a lot of fouls. Kamp was my assignment tonight; I focused on him the first half, playing tough defense on him and being aggressive on the other end."
On the crowd size during the NIT-"Going into spring break, I didn't expect much from the crowd, but the thing that's been great this season is our crowd. Especially our student section, and that's a lot of credit to them in supporting us and being with us through everything. They could have given up on us after we didn't make the NCAA Tournament but they respect what we do on the court and they wanted to support us. That was huge tonight, and I feel like that's been huge throughout the tournament."
