Colorado University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Colorado, Air Force Quotes
November 25, 2012 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General- "I think people understand now when I talked about Air Force earlier, I felt pretty nervous. Air Force is a good team, well coached, well disciplined. They're experienced - they have five senior starters. Obviously we did a great job in the first half taking away their layups. We only gave up one, it was in transition. What we didn't do as good is get to the three point shooters. We thought a lot of their looks in the first half were too open and we got caught on some flare screens and ball screens. You have to pick your poison against Air Force because it's hard to take away the ball. We talked about it at half time. What I like about this team is that we challenge them and they start figuring out for themselves that they can execute. We held them to 25% beyond the arc in the second half. The pace of the game was good. Depth is something that we're going to continue to develop. It's going to be a strength of this team; it may not be there yet. I thought the guys who came off the bench played well and gave us some good minutes."
On Whether He Had Seen Such Good Outside Shooting Before- "As an assistant coach, I coached at Missouri Valley. You run into really skilled basketball players. I don't care if the kids at Evansville, at Creighton; I've coached against good shooting teams before. Not only are they are good shooters, they space the floor, they cut and it's something our guys aren't used to seeing every day. Coach Rohn did a good job on the scouting report and [the assistant coaches] did a great job running Air Force's stuff to give our guys an indication of [what to expect]. But sometimes you got to take that experience from practice and adjust on the fly."
On Josh Scott's Play Tonight- "We wanted to go inside. Whether it was Josh or Andre [Roberson] or Shane [Harris-Tunks] or [Xavier Johnson]...He obviously showed signs why he was so highly regarded coming out of high school. Josh is a great low-post player. He showed tonight he has good skills, composure, balance. It doesn't always look the prettiest but he has a way to put the ball in the basket. Our guys believe in Josh - you look at Spencer on the break; he's always looking ahead to Josh. He has great hands, catches everything in there. He has to learn how to deal with double teams - that's going to be the next step in the progression. As he continues to be that threat, people are going to have to double and that's going to free it up for our shooters."
On The Frustration Of The Scoreboard Not Reflecting Good Play On The Court- "Sometimes it's frustrating; but you can't let that frustration show. What one of things that we tell our players to do is don't play the scoreboard, play the possession. The three point shot is a great equalizer in college basketball. Tonight you saw that, we were outrebounding them. We're making 2's inside and they're making 3's; it gets you back in the game pretty quickly. One of the things we always say to our guys is if they're going to make jump shots over our hands for 40 minutes from three, we're going to shake their hand at the end and say 'congratulations, we got beat.' Very few teams can do that. What we can't let happen is to give those three shooters wide-open looks. We have to adjust a little quicker than we did tonight. I liked how we handled ourselves and their composure and the understanding that they might make a couple threes, but we just have to stay composed."
On A Team That Is So Balanced Offensively- "I just told Mark Johnson on the radio. When we are balanced, we have a lot of weapons. We have weapons inside, we have weapons outside, we can score in transition, we can score in the half court. When we make plays for each other, we're pretty good. One of the things we have to do is get our assist to turnover ratio better. We had 11 assists and 15 turnovers. When we have 15 turnovers I want to have 22, 23 assist. That assist to turnover ratio needs to keep getting better."
On What He Told Askia Booker On The Last Play- "I was just screaming to pull it out. Last thing we want to do is run up the score. He wanted a show time dunk and the fans wanted it, but the right thing to do is to run it out. I was proud of Ski for doing that. Not just Air force, I thought it was a class act."
On The Team's Potential Complacency- "Last year we played air force coming back from Puerto Rico on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That was the biggest mistake we've done scheduling. You're on the road for almost a week. You're mentally, emotionally, physically tired. This year, by design, we moved off that Wednesday to Sunday. When you're playing good you want to keep playing. Sometimes you wonder as a coach, are you doing enough. We haven't been doing enough. I think we did enough to keep the guys sharp."
On Colorado's Status As An AP Ranked Team- "We don't talk about it. I'm not going to ignore it; it's a fact and I'm happy for our program. I'm happy for our fans. We have to understand how we got there and understand what we have to do to stay there and concentrate. We don't have to win every game; we just have to figure out what to do to win the next game."
Colorado Forward Andre Roberson
On Air Force Coming Out Strong- "They came out pretty hot and made a lot of contested jump shots. Coach Boyle kept encouraging us to play your shots high and we knew they wouldn't be able to do that all 40 minutes. So, we kept contesting them and eventually the shots stopped falling."
On How Rebounding Factored Into The Win- "Rebounding was a big factor. It takes away their possessions and second chance points. I feel like that was a major part of the game. We killed them on the boards."
On The 18 Second Chance Points- "We preach boxing out, so that is one of the things I thought our guys did a good job with tonight."
On His Mindset When Teams Are Shooting Well- "What I focus on is communication and trying not to let them get the ball. One thing they did was set good screens and flash screens and that's how they got some of their open shots. I thought our guys did a good job of covering them, but I guess it wasn't enough in the first half."
On Letting Offense Come To Him- "I guess you could say that. I just feel like I stopped pressing and let the game come to me. I just played the game I've loved since I was young."
On The Team's Overall Balance In Scoring- "That's what coach wants. He wants a balanced team. He doesn't want one particular scorer on the team. That's what makes a team hard to stop, when you have a variety of players who can go off."
On How They Improved Their Free Throw Percentage- "Coach made us come in here [Coors Event Center] on our own and shoot about 100 free throws every day outside of practice. I feel like that really helped us. We also have a new system that helps us as well."
Colorado Forward Josh Scott
On If Air Force Was Worn Out In Second Half- "I think they were definitely tired. We kind of knew that they weren't going to continue to make the shots that they were making in the first half because we were contesting their shots. I think we wore them out by the second half."
On If There Was An Emphasis On Getting The Ball Inside- "Coach is always trying to get the ball inside, whether that is to me, Andre [Roberson], Xavier Johnson, really anyone who has an advantage in there. So, there is kind of a constant emphasis on that."
On First 20 Point Game- "Personally, I just feel like it felt like any other night. I was just playing my game. I have never played against a team that could shoot this well before so I was kind of in shock. Coming from Colorado, you don't see that very often, so, I was just playing really."
Air Force Head Coach Dave Pilipovich
General- "Our guys showed some toughness, they came out and battled. We went through a stretch there in the second half where we probably got a little aggressive offensively, a little quick with our decision making and it hurt us. But our effort, our toughness, our competitiveness, I love it."
On G Todd Fletcher - "Fletcher was good. Mike (Fitzgerald) and Todd and all of our guys were. But Todd really looked (good). He was coming off some ball screens and got some easy baskets early, which got him into the flow."
On the Turning Point of the Game - "The second shots and also the post feeds inside to their big guys. When they got it in, they either scored or got fouled or both and that hurt us. And then we got Taylor (Broekhuis) in foul trouble and we had to bring him out and with him out we lose a little bit."
On F Josh Scott - "Josh is very good. He plays like he's a senior. He's very talented, very composed on the floor. I love his demeanor, I love his work ethic. I would love to not play him every game, he's talented. He made a great decision (by coming to Colorado) and he is going to be very good here."
-COLORADO-