Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle

General
“That was as good a two halves that we’ve put together back-to-back offensively all year. When you have 25 assists and six turnovers you’re going to hopefully win a lot of games. I thought that we really shared the ball tonight and had togetherness on offense. We still have some improvements to make defensively and rebounding the ball. But I think that this team showed that when they play together, because we don’t have one player on this team that can carry this squad, and they share the ball along with playing with energy and passion defensively, this team can be as good as they want to be and beat any team in this league. But we’ve also shown that when we don’t, we’re very average. Tonight was a good night for the Buffs.”

On Assists by CU
“The assist game was big for us tonight. It got our mindset going that our players took from practice to the game. Because sometimes when those lights go on, guys can get selfish and hunt their shots. But tonight for the most part we didn’t do that. Coach Bill Grier helped us put in an assist drill this week. And overall coach Grier has brought some nice things to our staff. What’s nice about Coach Grier is that when things are going tough, which has happened this year, he’s always got a thought or idea. They aren’t always good but this one was really good. Coach Grier was a head coach in San Diego for eight years, and it’s invaluable to have a guy like that. A part of my staff has been together for seven years now and sometimes the new ideas aren’t there, so Coach Grier brings new ideas to our staff.”

On Getting Everyone to Play Together
“It’s about putting egos aside and it’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit. It’s a challenge as a college basketball coach, especially at this level. Because everyone of our players are thinking about the next level and the next chapters of their careers, it’s a daily challenge to keep everyone playing for the name Colorado on the front of the jersey and not the name on the back. I wish I had a simple answer, but all you can do is keep harping for the team to stay together. I think this type of play can become contagious, just like selfish play can become contagious. When you’re taking a quick shot, that can also become contagious as well. It’s amazing how the contagiousness of good things and the contagiousness of bad things can sometimes be over looked. It starts with leadership and it sets the tone. And tonight for us and playing together it started with Derrick White. He’s second in the Pac-12 in scoring, if Derrick is worried about finishing in the top three scoring in the Pac-12, he probably takes more than seven shots tonight, but he didn’t.”

On Defensive Performance
“We’ve got to get better there. Coming out of halftime I was nervous. We played defense in front of our bench during the first half and our assistant coaches, who do a great job of scouting, made sure that we knew what they were running and we would yell it out to our players and they would still score on us in the first half. When you know somethings coming and you can’t stop, as a coach I tell myself now the defense is away from our bench and we can’t clue them in on everything and that doesn’t sit well with you. But to our players credit they came out in the second half and the breakdowns were fewer and we did a better job even without the coaches yelling what play was coming.”

On How Team Practice Effects Feelings Going Into the Games
“I learned long ago that stuff like that doesn’t matter. Assistant coaches would come in and say we warmed up pretty well and we’re ready to go and then we go out and lay an egg. Or we warm up and we see that we’re flat and then a guy goes out and gets 30. Now if we don’t practice well I’m concerned on that day, and frankly yesterday was one of our worst practices of the year. And I told the team after practice, thank god that we didn’t play Stanford on that day because we would have gotten by 30 yesterday by the way we practiced. We didn’t get beat by 30 tonight, and we played tonight not yesterday. I want good practices every single day, but when you get into March it gets hard. It’s like the NBA guys in May, practice is not something that’s high on their priority list. It’s always high on the coaches’ priority list, but sometimes you’ve got to let it go.”

On How the Team Started the Second Half
“That was the best start to the second half that we’ve had all year. Our crowd got into it because they thrive off of us and how we play. Our players came out and played great, forcing them into a timeout two minutes into the second half. If I knew the answer to why we started the second half so well I’d bottle it up and save it.”

Colorado Players

Deleon Brown, Fr., G

On Playing Again After His Concussion
“It was definitely good to see that first one go in. I would just have to say it’s a credit to our ball handling. We had six guys in double digits which just means we were moving the ball around well. We were selfless and looking for our teammates.”

Derrick White, Sr., G

On Ball Sharing
“We’ve been talking all week about sharing the ball, getting the best shot. When we’re moving the ball like that and no one has an agenda and no one is hunting their shots, we’re hard to guard and getting easy looks it’s something we need to continue to do.”

On What Went Well Tonight
“As a point guard, I have to do a better job of getting people the ball. I was trying to get people shots early. We did a good job with rolling hard on the ball screens. I was just trying to find the open man. We have great shooters this year so then it’s just easy.”

On Coach Boyle's Drill That Does Not Count A Point Unless There Is An Assist
“That drill forces you to look for your teammates because if you don’t you won’t score any points. So it was a good drill for us and it’s something we need to continue on with.”

George King, Jr., G

On The Team's Performance Tonight
"I’m really proud of the way we played tonight. Hopefully we can take what we did tonight to do it in our next game and the next one after that.”

On The Game Plan For Stanford's Reid Travis
“We had a good game plan for [Reid] Travis. We know he likes to go right and they like to clear the right side of the court for him. So we sit on his right hand and force him to into the help on the left side of the court. He was still able to get fouls but it wasn’t as many as he normally gets. We knew that if we were able to slow him down that our chance of winning the game was that much greater.”

Stanford Head Coach Jerod Haase

On what went wrong:
“They outplayed us in every statistical category. It definitely started on the defensive end with the inability to guard. We weren’t guarding their three-point shooters and they were able to spread out, and have their way.”

On what changed the pace of the game:
“Our inability to get stops at the end of the first half and in the second half. It starts with dribble penetration and the inability to guard the different screens they were giving. They were getting interior post touches that led to a bunch of threes.”

On Reid Travis:
“Reid is always a warrior and a competitor. We need to get him clean looks, and hopefully that will change.”

On what the team can learn from this game:
“We have to learn. Whether it is any game this year, we have to take it and try to learn and go with it.”

Colorado University Athletics

Colorado-Stanford Quotes