CU Oregon Quotes
vs
Grace College (Ind.)
Oct 19 (Sun)
12 p.m.
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General
“I think that’s the Colorado Basketball team we all know and love. I couldn’t be more proud of a group of guys. As a head coach, I’ve never been through something like this, with a team like this. Those guys in that locker room, the joy and happiness after the four tough losses we’ve endured, they handled the line-up shift the other night like men, I was really proud of them for that, and tonight we flipped it back and everybody responded. The joy and togetherness in that locker is something we can build on, it’s not going to be easy. We’re halfway through the conference season, the first nine games are in the rearview mirror. I want our players to enjoy this moment because we beat a heck of a basketball team. They’re not only a top 10 team, they’re a legit top 10 team. Oregon is every bit as good as that #10 ranking they came in here with, I have a lot of respect for Coach Altman and his players.”
On Defensive Intensity For 40 Minutes
“We haven’t seen it. I mean, maybe the guys said ‘enough is enough’, they did it, I didn’t do it. We had our game plan, but it’s the players job to go out and execute what they’ve been told to do and tonight they did it to a T. (Oregon) made some tough shots, but the good thing about our team is we didn’t get our heads down, we didn’t stop competing. We wanted to compete for 40 minutes. It sounds simple but I’m not sure we haven’t really done that.”
On Derrick White’s Play In Final Minutes
“Players make plays down the stretch. In the Xavier game that we won here back in December, Derrick White made plays. He made big time plays down the stretch tonight. I can’t say enough about what he brings to this team. Tonight was a complete team effort and he got a lot of help tonight. There’s been nights when Derrick hasn’t gotten help, but everybody was dialed in.”
On Game Plan
“In the first half we tried to soft press them after made baskets, back to zone. We’re not a zone team and I think that showed at times during the first half. We wanted to keep them off balance and show them something a little different than what they were expecting from Colorado, on misses we were back in man. In the second half we locked in to our 22 defense which is our half-court man to man defense and our guys just bucked up and did what they had to do against some really good players.”
On This Win Turning Around The Season
“We went through that losing streak and I was focused on the next game. Let’s just figure out how we win the next game. We’ve won two in a row. Whoop-dee-do. That’s great, but it’s about the next game. I’m not worried about streak or runs, I just want these guys dialed in. We’ve got some guys, who the end of their career is near, and hopefully they rise to the challenge.”
On Oregon Being Fatigued
“I don’t know that’s probably a better question for Oregon. Certainly we want the pace of play to be fast. Offensively we always want to push it and get easy questions. Pace of play in the Coors Event Center, we want it as fast as it can be. That doesn’t mean we want to give up lay-ups and open threes, with Oregon we want to slow them down a little bit. I don’t know if fatigue played a factor tonight but our energy was terrific.”
Colorado Players
George King, Jr., G
On The Win“I think our effort was there but also our execution. We were executing our defensive plan. When we do that and our effort is there and when we do that consistently for 40 minutes, that’s the result that we get. That can’t just happen for the one game though. We have to carry that on. I ‘m glad that that happened tonight because it shows the team and the coaching staff that we’re capable of doing it. Now hopefully going forward we can continue that.”
On Derrick White’s Play Tonight
“Derrick was great tonight. He made plays down the stretch, made some clutch shots. He got a lot of deflections and key plays. A lot of stuff that he did that was great doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. I’m not sure if we could have won that game without him tonight.”
On CU’s Defensive Effort
“I think that was huge. I don’t think Oregon was expecting that but we came out and did it and we were able to ride that wave pretty much all through the first half. The second half we switched gears and defended really well. That was huge for us as well.”
On The Team’s Sense Of Urgency
“We’ve had a sense of urgency but I think it’s even greater now. It’s not all of sudden. We’ve had a sense of urgency. Guys want to win, guys want to compete. What’s more urgent than being down 0-7. That’s been there. But we had maybe a little bit more tonight.”
On Coach Boyle’s Message After The Game
“He was really happy. He was extremely happy with how we guarded and the fact that we’re a capable team who can compete with anyone when we defend like that. Those were basically his words.”
On If This Is The Turning Point Of The Season
“This could be how we turn it around. Going forward, looking at our schedule, we can beat anybody. But we have to consistently guard for 40 minutes. This is definitely how we can turn this ship around.
Derrick White, Sr., G
On The Win“It’s a great feeling. It was a team effort all the way. We all made big plays and we al guarded. That’s the main reason we won this game. That’s the main reason you come to Colorado in the first place, to win on your home court.”
On Getting Another Pac-12 Win
“It was good to get that monkey off of our back and finally get that first Pac-12 win. We just that knew if we didn’t guard today that we’d get blown out here on our home court. We just wanted to have that defensive mentality.
On This Win Being A Confidence Booster
“It’s a confidence booster for sure. We know that any team in the Pac-12 can beat us but we also just showed that we can beat any team in the Pac-12. We have to bring it every night and can’t get too high here. We have to get back to work and plan for Cal and Stanford.”
Oregon Head Coach Dana Altman
On His Team’s Performance
“We’re disappointed. The turnovers obviously…at the start of the ball game they came out and got those 4 three’s early and set a tone for the game. We never recovered; we weren’t ready to play and that’s on me. We just came out flat and played from behind. Their energy was better. We forced them into some turnovers in the first half and only had 1 in the second. We don’t play that way…we had 16 turnovers so we were not successful. Ball movement was bad. We took 34 three’s out of 57 shots so that’s not us.”
On The Difference Between Colorado and Oregon’s Energy
“We got out-rebounded, had more turnovers than them and that’s not a formula for success on the road especially. We had a bad start and never really got going. Our execution was awful. I don’t want to take anything away from Colorado because their energy level was better than ours. They beat us. They out-rebounded us, outfought us and made more plays than we did. Again I don’t want to take anything away from CU because they played hard.”
Continuing On His Team’s Performance
“We had a couple looks we just could never put things together. We never got a streak offensively where we put things together and I think we shot the ball 29 percent in the second half and 30 percent overall. We just never got a streak going. It’s been a while since we lost but we got what we deserved tonight. We didn’t play well enough to win and we’ll have to get better.”