Colorado-Utah Quotes

Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle

General
"You can blame this loss on the coach, for not calling a timeout at the end and making sure we get a great shot. I'm kicking myself for it since we had one left. This was a heck of a basketball game and was won by the team that made plays down the stretch. Utah made the plays and we didn't. I tip my hat to Lorenzo Bonam, he made a big time play at the end. I thought our defense was great, but he made a tough shot. We didn't make some tough shots tonight, and we missed some easy shots in the second half. We've got to finish better, but we talked to our team after the SMU game and we told them there's going to be a lot of these close games. WE didn't get it done tonight. I thought our defensive rebounding was good tonight, but we need to get some guys better at offensive rebounding. Overall our offense just wasn't good enough and we didn't make plays down the stretch."

On offensive play
"We want to attack the basket, and we had the ball at the rim a couple of times tonight, but we just have to finish better. As a coach I want to see if we're getting good shots, and if we are then I have to take my hands off the wheel. If we're not getting good shots it's up to the coaches to make sure we are doing a better job. I didn't think we took a lot of bad shots, we just didn't make any shots. The officials let us play tonight, it was a physical game and we knew that it probably would be going in. We only shot four free throws tonight."

On Josh Scott's performance against Utah's Jakob Poeltl
"I wouldn't trade Josh Scott for any big man in the country. Josh Scott's my guy and I love him. I'll take the attitude, and effort he brings every night. The kids a stud and I thought he was terrific."

On end of game situations
"We have to execute and finish better. It's something we work on in practice and something we will continue to work on in practice. They doubled Scott all night, so we tried to play through him and Wesley Gordon on the elbows and they both made some plays. But we didn't execute like we're capable of tonight. Players have to make plays down the stretch. Their guys made some plays and we didn't make plays. We have to make plays down the stretch."

On players stepping up
"I think everybody needs to understand that when they're in a position to make a play they have to make the play. It's not just one guy, we aren't a one man team. The beauty of our team is that we have good balance. Scott is a guy we will go to in critical situations, but people double team him so now it's up to others to make the play."

On turnovers
"The kind of turnovers we had were live ball turnovers and you can't have that. Twelve is a good number, and I think we took care of the ball enough. But I think we're 12^th in the conference in turnover margin, and they only had 11 against our 12 so that turnover margin was minus one. And that was the difference between us having the ball at the end and them having the ball at the end. And maybe we make a play at the end and win this game. That's were our players have to understand that every possession counts and that we need to value every possession. If there's a turnover in the begging or at the end they are both equally damaging to our team. They were opportunistic on the turnovers we had, and we didn't create a lot on our end. But I thought our defense was terrific, holding them to 56 points which is a good defensive effort. We just didn't make enough plays. There's going to be a lot of games like this going forward, we just need to figure out how to come out on the winning end of these games."

On Dominique Collier's night
"I was happy with his play in the second half, not so much with the first half, but the second half was much better. He had three assists and one turnover which is good. I thought he was aggressive and got us going in the second half. We need to finish better in transition; with the amount of stops we got tonight we need to finish more than we did. He's pretty good at that but it's something we need to improve."

Colorado Players

Josh Scott, Sr., F

On Losing In The Final Seconds
"They made a good play at the end. If you look everywhere else I think we didn't do anything bad. Offensively, we could have done better, but defensively we're right there and they made a play at the end. Bottom line, it's going to happen."

On Playing Against Jakob Poeltl
"I think defensively I did great. Offensively I was a little frustrated. I didn't get some calls that I thought I should have got, but that's basketball. It's go
ing to happen some nights."

On Possibly A Trend Of Missing Out On Big Wins
"I wouldn't call it a common trend; we lost. Some nights it's turnovers, tonight we just didn't get the stop when we needed to. Other than that, it's disappointing. I don't think there's any common theme."

On Tough First Half Shooting As A Team
"They're a good defensive team. I think right now we're in a little bit of a cold spell. The stats would probably support that. Those happen and you get out of them. Defensively we're doing really well. I think offensively, I don't think any of us are really worried, because we all know we're good offensive players. It's going to pick back up; we're just in a little bit of a slump right now."

George King, So., F

On Utah's Run In The Final Five Minutes
"I know for myself that I had some turnovers that I probably shouldn't have had. That helped them get that 11 to two run. There was one particular play – a baseline lateral screen – me and Josh ran out to help and they ended up getting a layup. Stuff like that; little things. It's frustrating; frustrating for myself."

On Getting Back On Track
"Since the season started, I've been having a shooting routine to make eight out of ten two-pointers, eight out of ten threes, eight out of ten two-pointer one-dribble pullups and same thing with the three. You keep doing that, it's a process. It's muscle memory after that, especially since I do most of my shooting here in that gym we just played in. It's the reason why those shots went in."

Utah Head Coach Larry Krystkowiak

General
"It was a battle, it was Friday night, the fight is physical. I was real pleased with the first half. We had a little glitch in that run in the second half but the most important was that we didn't quit. We were at a crossroads when we got down seven a few times, cut it to three, down seven down eight and managed to get enough stops. Our defense was good protected the rim and then we had guys that made some big shots for us so that's what it boiled down to and we had just enough."

Plan for the final play
"It's pretty cool, plans don't always come together but I was trying to catch a little nap this afternoon in the hotel and started think about end of game situations and took out all my notes and all my papers and spent about an hour and half just going over what would put our guys in the best situation and came up with about a half of dozen plays and then talked to the coaches before the game and asked everybody's opinion separate from each other what they think the best chance for us to have. We had some similarities and ended up going with one that I thought about and it was great. It seemed like the ball hung onto the rim forever, but Lorenzo really has a knack for getting in there and made a big time play for us. It was fitting for how much we talked about it today and as much as I thought about it."

On Lorenzo a breakout player
"He's really coachable and I think that it's been a little bit confusing for him he went through a period where he seemed a little confused he wasn't attacking. I think he does best when he is attacking and kind of doing his thing. Made some impact if you remember the Puerto Rico game I thought he was big against Texas Tech. I think as the case in scouting and see him going to the rim and them number of people were collapsing and we through a week period here he would get to the rim and sort of forcing bad shoots. Maybe making that pass to someone that is available so we went in this week to look at some film. The next couple weeks he lost his aggressiveness and started thinking about going to find somebody, he's not good enough to go find somebody if he's not going full speed. It was interesting in the locker room in front of the whole team I let him know in order for you take the next step and for our team to be good you need to have that recklessness you had, but if things shut down at the rim you need to find somebody and tonight he had some opportunities to finish. He's making good progress, he's playing hard and he's been a lot of fun to coach."

How important was this win
"That question was posed before the week like if you don't win is there pressure, is the season over, I think it was asked at the press conference. I think we all know the gravity of the situation. One game is not going to kill you but it's a whole different thing when your 3-0 or 1-2 after the Stanford game this was sort of a feel-good pick me up, maybe a little bit of momentum. This league is going to be crazy as already witnessed early in the season. Getting road wins and protecting your home court is going to be kind of a dog-eat-dog deal so there all big games. I don't think we played with that fear or that pressure like we can't lose this one obviously or else I don't think we would have played as good as we did. The guys are mature and hopefully this will erase the negative feeling we had from Stanford and wipe that slate, clean and get ready to play some home games"

What changed momentum in the second half
"When we got down that seven or eight, we decided to play some zone and it was good, our guys did a good job in the zone. It took away some of that isolation and what got them that lead. I thought it took away some of the post play. That was probably this biggest shift. I think we finished the entire game in out zone so that was a key component to it."

Is Colorado your biggest rival
"They are our rival, it's hard to say rival. I'm always pulling for Colorado when we're not playing I think does the same thing were a lot alike the rival doesn't have that same edge. There are a lot of marbles in the game when you play one a week every other time you have two games so it's almost like it's worth two."

Utah Players

Lorenzo Bonam, Jr., G

At the time out did they tell you to take the shot?
"Yea, they wanted me to get to my strong hand and try to finish or create something for the last shot so we could win.

I didn't even look back at it, I thought it was money the whole way. I thought I made it."

Why did they go to you for that shot?
"I'm one of the only drivers on the team and I'm a good playmaker, I guess they just trusted in me to make the basket.

It felt good to be the one to do it at D1, the college level .I hit my knee, it's swollen, I had to fight through it."

After the road trip and hit the shot?
"It felt real good, we were in that situation before and we asked somebody else to hit it and we ended up going into overtime. I guess it was somebody else's time to try it. He threw it right into my hands."