Colorado University Athletics
CU-Arizona Post Game Quotes
January 16, 2015 | Men's Basketball
University of Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General
"I'm really happy with the way we battled. I thought our competiveness and our competitive spirit was great tonight, but again, we expect that and that shouldn't be something we pat ourselves on the back for but it was much better than at Utah. As long as your players are giving you that kind of effort, as a coach there are things we have to do better and the name of this game was rebounding. We're not making any excuses for anything. It doesn't matter who is suiting up for Colorado, we expect to win, we expect to come in here and battle and compete. That's what we're concerned with. Whether we are short-handed or not, we got beat tonight by a good team and we got really beat on the boards badly. Our zone was to try to slow them down. I knew if our bigs got in foul trouble because we're so thin we would have to go to it. I thought our guys did a pretty good job for not playing it a lot, we're not a zone team, everyone knows that. But, we didn't rebound very well out of it; we've got to box out better. Obviously, we're not going to win a jumping contest with Arizona, they're taller, they're more athletic, they're bigger, but we can box out better than we boxed out. It doesn't take talent to do that. It's not about jumping, it's about getting bodies on people. They did a good job on us boxing out. We had eight offensive rebounds but three of them came late. They just beat us on the boards all night long. We talked about taking care of the ball, and we made great strides there tonight. If we take anything positive out of this game, it's our competitive spirit and the fact that only we had 10 turnovers on the road. If you do that, you give yourself a chance. But again, second chance points, and at halftime we had eight turnovers, so we had two in the second half which is really good. But at halftime, 27 of their 35 points were second chance points or off our turnovers. We talked about that at Utah. Our guys did a good job in the second half of taking care of the ball."
On Whether He Would Ever Consider Using A Zone Defense When At Full Strength
"No."
On G Askia Booker's 30-Point Performance
"I thought he played with unbelievable passion, and fire, and competitiveness, and you know he was terrific. We have to get him more help, not only offensively, but 'Ski' makes a lot of plays for himself, I would like to see more guys making plays for him and him making plays for others. Eight assists is not the number you want. But I thought 'Ski's' effort tonight was great. He is a competitive guy and we all know that. We needed an effort like that out of him tonight, but we have to get more. This is an opportunity for guys to step up, and that opportunity, if it passes them by, it passes them by, that's life. We have some guys that are capable of playing better than they're playing right now."
On G Jaron Hopkins Continuing To Improve
"He's coming, no question. I told him at halftime, 'I want you to be aggressive.' The first play of the game, I thought it was a great play, but he missed the layup. He's got to finish better than he's finishing, but when he attacks, he's good. He's an unselfish player. Yeah, he's coming, Jaron is coming. [F] Wesley [Gordon] was hampered with foul trouble tonight, it was hard to get him into a flow. [F] Dustin Thomas battles, but outside of [G Askia Booker], offensively, we didn't have much in terms of consistency and production all night. We have to continue to improve. Bottom line is we didn't rebound the ball well enough, defend the ball well enough to beat a Top Ten team on the road. But, we battled and that's a step in the right direction. I told our guys it's all about learning from this and growing and turning our attention to Saturday [at Arizona State]. Saturday is a game that we need to win. We need to start winning on the road. We've got Arizona and Utah, the two toughest teams on the road in our rear view mirror and we're four games into an 18 game schedule. So, we've got 14 games left and we've got the two hardest out of the way. So, we can start making some head way here and making a move, but it's got to start on Saturday."
On F Josh Scott and F Xavier Johnson's Availability For Saturday's Game At ASU
"I don't know. I hope so, but I don't know the answer to that. That's totally out of my control, and quite frankly I don't even worry about it. Whoever is ready to practice tomorrow, that's who we are going to practice with and they'll be back when they get back. I feel bad for them getting hurt, but that's part of the game. I want to make it crystal clear, we are not using any injuries as any excuse for not winning games. Whether it is Arizona or Arizona State, we've got guys in this program that have ability. Do we need play better? Absolutely. Do we need to coach better? Absolutely. That's what I'm aiming to do tomorrow when I get up."