Colorado University Athletics
CU-Utah Post Game Quotes
March 01, 2014 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General
“The second, we're a different team. For some reason, the last couple games, really it happened three of the last four games because UCLA is another example when we played down there. Three of those last four games, in the second half we come out and we can't stop anybody. Utah is a good team and they have good players, but we did a pretty good job in the first half to shut them down; it's not like we locked them down, they still shot 47% in the first half. We had eight assists, five turnovers in the first half, we made a couple shots to keep it close. We still weren't guarding like were capable and rebounding we were down one; but, Jordan Loveridge I though was the difference in the game. He was really good, and we didn't have any answer for him. Our energy was better and our intensity was better tonight, but the results weren't much better than Arizona or UCLA. We have to get that figured out because it's a 40-minute game. We're a pretty good first half team right now, but second half were not that good. I have to figure out why and we have to get that corrected.”
On Offensive Struggles
“We struggled offensively, we had some good looks especially at the end of the first half, we got to the rim we just couldn't finish. We had a couple shot clock violations where at the end of the shot clock we couldn't make a play. We had three starters on the bench with two fouls and I felt like we kind of survived that first half because we played well enough early, but then they (Utah) hit two threes to tie it at half. It takes our team a while to figure things out, midway through the second half we start playing through Josh [Scott] and our players were really looking for him down there. My question is, we're trying to do that from the jump, we have to play through that guy, he's too good of a player and puts a lot of pressure on the defense and he's doing the best he can. But our perimeter players need to do a better job of No. 1, getting him the ball, and then we have to space out and we have to make some shots to make it easier on him. Because if you can have an inside-out presence you're pretty good, but Josh has a lot of guys collapsing on him and we're not shooting the ball like we're capable of from three.”
On Whether Team Understands The Urgency Needed Down The Stretch
“I don't know if they do or not, I'm not going to change what we do when it comes to that. What we're going to do is talk about what does it take to win the next game. We're not going to talk about RPI's and NCAA Tournament; our guys are smart enough, they know, they watch ESPN so it's not something we're going to harp on. We've put ourselves in a good position, but we let two opportunities here in the last two games slip away. We're going to have another one on Wednesday at Stanford, and its not going to be any easier than it was in here today, so we got to figure it out. The bottom line is our team is not mentally tough enough right now to withstand the frustrations when we don't score and to make us more intense on defense, instead that makes us softer on defense, that's why we are giving up 84% against Arizona and 70% against Utah. It happens once, it might be an aberration, it happens three of the last four times I think we have to look in the mirror. Whether it's UCLA, whether its Arizona, or whether its Utah, you better hook it up and you better do it for 40 minutes. There's no excuses, were just not mentally tough enough right now to withstand those big runs and get a stop on the defensive end.”
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