Colorado-Omaha Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement:
“Tonight was a hard fought victory obviously. A night where we played against a team that made some unbelievably tough shots in the second half. They made it close. I have a ton of respect for Omaha, their coaching staff, and their players. Their veteran guys have toughness. One of the things we talked to our players about in the locker room after the game was you have to respect everybody and fear nobody. I am not saying we didn’t respect Omaha coming in here, but you have to be ready to take somebody’s best shot. I think we took their best shot tonight and found a way to win. We weren’t our best offensively. We didn’t score 100 points like we did the other night against Drake. We turned the ball over more. We didn’t make plays for each other that I think we are capable of. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but this was good for us. It was good to be in this kind of game where we were tested down the stretch. They made some tough shots, but we found a way to win. Tyler Bey’s defensive play at the end was key. We will take it and move on.”
On What They Can Learn From Tonight
“We can learn from our press offense there at the end. We got that thing turned over. If McKinley (Wright
IV) catches that with his back to the sideline, he sees D’Shawn (Schwartz) open and can maybe pass it up the sideline rather than stepping out of bounds. We can learn from making the extra pass. When we drove the ball they were coming not just to help, but they were coming to steal the ball. We have to make the extra pass. The game is simple when you do that. When you hold on to it our try to dribble too much and try to go through two guys, it makes it hard. We’ve got to get better in that regard. Overall, you would rather learn from a win than from loss no doubt.”
On The Defense
“There were times when we got extended in our ball screens. We knew going into the game that two things had to be good. We had to have great ball screen defense and we had to guard their isolation plays. Guard the ball and take it personal in terms of “mono e mono”. They tried to iso (Mitch) Hahn, tried to iso (Zach) Jackson, and iso (JT) Gibson and bring him off screens. I thought our ball screen defense got extended a little bit. Our bigs have to be better at showing early. Showing their chest early. Our guards have to get through screens. We got extended on our ball screens and gave them some open looks. When you let a team hang around and let a team make a couple threes, now their juices start flowing. Their confidence gets going. Now they can make tough threes with a hand in their face which is what happened.”
On Lucas Siewert
“We talked in our film session after the Drake game with our team that Lucas Siewert needs to get more than four shots. He was 4-4 against Drake. He got ten shots tonight. I’d like to get him 12-15 (shots) quite frankly with the way he shots it and the confidence he is playing with. Lucas is doing some really, really good things and is coming into the player we thought he could be when we recruited him. It’s a testament to him and the hard work he has put into his game and certainly the weight room. Lucas is playing pretty well right now.”
On Improving Defensively
“Our players have to commit to getting better. You can’t just say, ‘Well, we won two in a row. We beat Drake and beat Omaha. We have San Diego next.’ That can’t be our mentality. When we come back for practice on Sunday we have to understand why Drake shot 60% from three in the second half and why they shot 53% from the field in the second half. If teams do that, we are going to be in some knock down drag outs like we were tonight. You can be scoring, but the only way you separate yourself is to stop the other team from scoring. If you score then they score, now you have a game. The only way you separate is if you score and they don’t. We have to understand that. I thought the last three minutes our defensive intensity ratcheted up. It shouldn’t ratchet up. It should be the same in the last three minutes as it was in the first 37 minutes. Tonight, it wasn’t. We have to learn from that. The film doesn’t lie.”
On McKinley Wright IV
“Tonight was not McKinley’s night. He was not as good as he is capable of being. He knows that, I know that. We all know that. This team needs to figure out how to win a game when McKinley is not at his best. You play 30 college basketball games. He is not going to be great every single night. He is going to have off nights off. He is going to have nights when it’s not just there. It is incumbent upon McKinley to make sure he is ready mentally. To make sure he is ready emotionally. He may not be playing at his best and it’s not because he is trying to play bad. I am not saying he played bad, he made big plays down the stretch. We have to figure out how somebody can spark this team. We really ask a lot of McKinley. Maybe sometimes too much. That is when you need other guys. Tyler Bey and Deleon Brown were great. Namon Wright was good again tonight I thought. I’m really pleased with back-to-back games from him. Lucas (Siewert) played really well. The beauty of this team is we have a lot of weapons. We have a lot of guys who can affect the game in different ways. We will figure it out. We are still learning and still young. Shane (Gatling) is figuring it out. Daylen (Kountz) is figuring out what this level is about. Evan (Battey) is leaning what this level is about. We still have some guys that are having some growing pains. But I am telling you what, Tuesday night again San Diego we better be ready to rock and roll. They are a legit team that is tough, well coached, and well disciplined. They execute. It is going to be a high-level game and we have to be ready to bring our hard hats.”
On The Mental Toughness Of The Team
“We complemented our team in the locker room after the game about that. They found a way to win, they found a way to buck up and get stops when they needed to get stops. We just have to understand that for us to beat good teams, especially good teams that make shots like Omaha, we can’t turn the ball over 16 times. That’s what I mean when I say that it was a good game for us at this point in the season. We were tested, our backs were against the wall. We didn’t fold our tent. We bucked up and did what we had to do when we had to do it. We can learn from that. We can learn and hopefully gain some confidence from that situation. There’s going to be more games like that for the Buffaloes this season. We’ve got to be ready for them.”
On Tyler Bey
“It may sound like a cliché, but players make plays. The bottom line is, you have a well-coached team on one side of the ball and a well-coached team on the other side of the ball and you’ve got players from both teams playing hard. Both teams are executing at a high level. I’m not saying that we both did tonight, we were both executing at a spotty level, but my point is that at the end of the day in close games, players have to make plays to win games. Tyler’s Bey’s one play on the defensive end turned into a three-point-play. McKinley (Wright IV) made some plays down the stretch. Namon Wright made a big play defensively. D’Shawn (Schwartz) made a big play defensively. Players have to make plays. Tyler made the play tonight that cracked the game open. That gave us a five-point-lead and I’m glad we had it. They did not go away.”
On the team’s offseason improvements
“That’s the D’Shawn (Schwartz) we’ve seen in practice. You have D’Shawn playing at a high level and Namon (Wright) playing at a high level. We know Deleon (Brown) is really capable. We can put Shane (Gatling) in the mix. We’ve got McKinley and Tyler (Bey). We’ve got the ingredients of a good team. We really do, but we’re going to need D’Shawn Shwartz to be that guy that he was tonight. We went small there late, we went with four guards and a big. That was a key stretch for us. He’s going to have to learn how to defend and rebound against bigger guys. I thought he was great tonight. He showed great toughness.”
“Tonight was a hard fought victory obviously. A night where we played against a team that made some unbelievably tough shots in the second half. They made it close. I have a ton of respect for Omaha, their coaching staff, and their players. Their veteran guys have toughness. One of the things we talked to our players about in the locker room after the game was you have to respect everybody and fear nobody. I am not saying we didn’t respect Omaha coming in here, but you have to be ready to take somebody’s best shot. I think we took their best shot tonight and found a way to win. We weren’t our best offensively. We didn’t score 100 points like we did the other night against Drake. We turned the ball over more. We didn’t make plays for each other that I think we are capable of. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but this was good for us. It was good to be in this kind of game where we were tested down the stretch. They made some tough shots, but we found a way to win. Tyler Bey’s defensive play at the end was key. We will take it and move on.”
On What They Can Learn From Tonight
“We can learn from our press offense there at the end. We got that thing turned over. If McKinley (Wright
IV) catches that with his back to the sideline, he sees D’Shawn (Schwartz) open and can maybe pass it up the sideline rather than stepping out of bounds. We can learn from making the extra pass. When we drove the ball they were coming not just to help, but they were coming to steal the ball. We have to make the extra pass. The game is simple when you do that. When you hold on to it our try to dribble too much and try to go through two guys, it makes it hard. We’ve got to get better in that regard. Overall, you would rather learn from a win than from loss no doubt.”
On The Defense
“There were times when we got extended in our ball screens. We knew going into the game that two things had to be good. We had to have great ball screen defense and we had to guard their isolation plays. Guard the ball and take it personal in terms of “mono e mono”. They tried to iso (Mitch) Hahn, tried to iso (Zach) Jackson, and iso (JT) Gibson and bring him off screens. I thought our ball screen defense got extended a little bit. Our bigs have to be better at showing early. Showing their chest early. Our guards have to get through screens. We got extended on our ball screens and gave them some open looks. When you let a team hang around and let a team make a couple threes, now their juices start flowing. Their confidence gets going. Now they can make tough threes with a hand in their face which is what happened.”
On Lucas Siewert
“We talked in our film session after the Drake game with our team that Lucas Siewert needs to get more than four shots. He was 4-4 against Drake. He got ten shots tonight. I’d like to get him 12-15 (shots) quite frankly with the way he shots it and the confidence he is playing with. Lucas is doing some really, really good things and is coming into the player we thought he could be when we recruited him. It’s a testament to him and the hard work he has put into his game and certainly the weight room. Lucas is playing pretty well right now.”
On Improving Defensively
“Our players have to commit to getting better. You can’t just say, ‘Well, we won two in a row. We beat Drake and beat Omaha. We have San Diego next.’ That can’t be our mentality. When we come back for practice on Sunday we have to understand why Drake shot 60% from three in the second half and why they shot 53% from the field in the second half. If teams do that, we are going to be in some knock down drag outs like we were tonight. You can be scoring, but the only way you separate yourself is to stop the other team from scoring. If you score then they score, now you have a game. The only way you separate is if you score and they don’t. We have to understand that. I thought the last three minutes our defensive intensity ratcheted up. It shouldn’t ratchet up. It should be the same in the last three minutes as it was in the first 37 minutes. Tonight, it wasn’t. We have to learn from that. The film doesn’t lie.”
On McKinley Wright IV
“Tonight was not McKinley’s night. He was not as good as he is capable of being. He knows that, I know that. We all know that. This team needs to figure out how to win a game when McKinley is not at his best. You play 30 college basketball games. He is not going to be great every single night. He is going to have off nights off. He is going to have nights when it’s not just there. It is incumbent upon McKinley to make sure he is ready mentally. To make sure he is ready emotionally. He may not be playing at his best and it’s not because he is trying to play bad. I am not saying he played bad, he made big plays down the stretch. We have to figure out how somebody can spark this team. We really ask a lot of McKinley. Maybe sometimes too much. That is when you need other guys. Tyler Bey and Deleon Brown were great. Namon Wright was good again tonight I thought. I’m really pleased with back-to-back games from him. Lucas (Siewert) played really well. The beauty of this team is we have a lot of weapons. We have a lot of guys who can affect the game in different ways. We will figure it out. We are still learning and still young. Shane (Gatling) is figuring it out. Daylen (Kountz) is figuring out what this level is about. Evan (Battey) is leaning what this level is about. We still have some guys that are having some growing pains. But I am telling you what, Tuesday night again San Diego we better be ready to rock and roll. They are a legit team that is tough, well coached, and well disciplined. They execute. It is going to be a high-level game and we have to be ready to bring our hard hats.”
On The Mental Toughness Of The Team
“We complemented our team in the locker room after the game about that. They found a way to win, they found a way to buck up and get stops when they needed to get stops. We just have to understand that for us to beat good teams, especially good teams that make shots like Omaha, we can’t turn the ball over 16 times. That’s what I mean when I say that it was a good game for us at this point in the season. We were tested, our backs were against the wall. We didn’t fold our tent. We bucked up and did what we had to do when we had to do it. We can learn from that. We can learn and hopefully gain some confidence from that situation. There’s going to be more games like that for the Buffaloes this season. We’ve got to be ready for them.”
On Tyler Bey
“It may sound like a cliché, but players make plays. The bottom line is, you have a well-coached team on one side of the ball and a well-coached team on the other side of the ball and you’ve got players from both teams playing hard. Both teams are executing at a high level. I’m not saying that we both did tonight, we were both executing at a spotty level, but my point is that at the end of the day in close games, players have to make plays to win games. Tyler’s Bey’s one play on the defensive end turned into a three-point-play. McKinley (Wright IV) made some plays down the stretch. Namon Wright made a big play defensively. D’Shawn (Schwartz) made a big play defensively. Players have to make plays. Tyler made the play tonight that cracked the game open. That gave us a five-point-lead and I’m glad we had it. They did not go away.”
On the team’s offseason improvements
“That’s the D’Shawn (Schwartz) we’ve seen in practice. You have D’Shawn playing at a high level and Namon (Wright) playing at a high level. We know Deleon (Brown) is really capable. We can put Shane (Gatling) in the mix. We’ve got McKinley and Tyler (Bey). We’ve got the ingredients of a good team. We really do, but we’re going to need D’Shawn Shwartz to be that guy that he was tonight. We went small there late, we went with four guards and a big. That was a key stretch for us. He’s going to have to learn how to defend and rebound against bigger guys. I thought he was great tonight. He showed great toughness.”
Colorado Players
D’Shawn Schwartz, So., G/F
On how it felt getting back on the court
“It was fun. Wish we could have had a little bit better game as a unit but we pulled it out and that’s really all that matters.”
On if he thought his shot was going tonight
“There were some shots that I passed up that I probably could have took. The last one at the end of the game I went to the rim and I traveled when I probably could have shot the three on that one. Just seeing what was open, taking good shots is what I was really trying to get.”
On playing a more overall game
“Yeah, I think so. I had seven rebounds, two offensive. Just trying to crash. Just trying to do anything that could help the team win. It’s big.”
On the positive of having a close game
“Yeah, I think it helps us to get some adversity and to get a nice close game before we get on the road. We have to make sure that we realize that everything’s not sweet. After the Drake game we probably got to high after that win. I think we just have to stay level headed and go into San Diego with a different mindset.”
On NCAA violation forcing him to sit out opener
“We had a team meeting and Coach Boyle pretty much just told the guys we had these compliance meetings already and we just have to listen to them when they come in and make sure you’re not playing in leagues that aren’t NCAA certified during a time period where you can’t play so my mistake completely.”
McKinley Wright IV, So., G
On importance of winning non-conference game
“It’s huge for us. We want to obviously win games. They came in and brought it to us. They gave us their best effort. We weren’t great from the start but we found a way to dig it out. A win is a win, we’ll take it.”
On what they had to do down the stretch to pull out the win
“We had to get stops. We’re going to hang our head on defense this year and we got stops towards the end of the game. They hit some tough shots but they missed a couple and we got the rebounds. Just stops. “
On what kept Omaha in the game
“I think it started with my energy and my effort. I was bad. I wasn’t fully there tonight and I know my guys feed off of me. They ran a good offense and they hit tough shots. I have to be better from the get go. They just hit tough shots.”
On playing against his high school teammate (Gibson)
“Yeah, we played with each other. One of my best friends. He kind of showed me the ropes when I was young. In seventh grade I met him, he was a freshman in high school and ever since then our relationship has grown. He’s been my guy.”
On his early turnovers “He wasn’t in my head (Gibson), I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t myself. Five turnovers is not who I am. In order for us to win, me being the point guard of this team and a leader, I can’t do that. It won’t happen again but tonight I just got off to a bad start.”
On Tyler Bey’s steal in the final minute
“That was big time. They were hot and they were feeling themselves. They were going. For Tyler to be able to make a play like that is huge for us. His confidence is huge for our team and our defense. Like I said, we’re going to hang our head on defense. Tyler, he’s made big defensive plays ever since he’s been here. There’s just another one to add to his list.”
On feeding off of Tyler Bey’s energy tonight
“Yeah, I think we can feed off anybody who plays. We’re such a deep team and I don’t think it’s just when I’m having a bad night. I think everyone on this team is capable of being big time players. You saw it tonight. D’Shawn played great, Tyler played really well, and he got big stops at the end. We use him to guard other team’s best bigs so Tyler is huge for us.”
On what was learned from tonight’s game
“We can’t take anybody in the country lightly. We’ve seen them play. We watched film on them play a couple other teams. I think we just came in and thought it was going to be a breeze. They gave us their best shot. In order for us to improve we have to jump on teams from the get go and not be in situations like this towards the end of the game.”
Omaha Head Coach Derrin Hansen
On How He Thought the Game Unfolded
“Let’s be honest, I know some people in Omaha who didn’t expect this to be a 79-75 game. We aren’t worried about those people, we are worried about the people who believe in us and the people who are with us all the time. Those are the people we are trying to please and those are the people we are trying to prove right. It is too much energy to try and prove people wrong and I am not about that. But I am about proving people right, I know who those people are and they know who they are. I appreciate those people with our program but I will say this, the way it unfolded was that we kept coming at them. I thought that we were the aggressor, I thought that we took our scheme and I thought that we played with the best communication and the best hustle that we have played with this year. It is something that I think that we can carry to our practices and I think that it can carry to our games. What I just told them was even though we have two seniors and two juniors, we are still a relatively a new basketball team with some people that we are putting in. Like a lot of teams in the country right now, we are still trying to find out our best combination; when we go small, where do we go? When we go big, where do we go? How do we handle certain situations defensively, when we are big and small? And we are getting through that but by our hustle and our communication tonight I was really proud of them because took care of some of the schematic problems that you have against teams that are bigger, longer, and stronger.”
On Overcoming a Nine Point Deficit Early in the Second Half
“Well we talked about starts, whether that is in the first or second half and let’s not kid ourselves we have not been good at that. We talked in the locker room about having a good start, my big worry was they are going to score on the first possession with a back-screen lob or something. We were going to take that guy somewhere, we weren’t going to let him get to the rim. I know that. I didn’t know what we were going to do with him but he wasn’t going to the rim. Then they got the run-out steal, dunk and I decided not to call a timeout because I wanted to see what we could do. Then that probably right now might be the best four minutes that we have played in a long time because with a new team we had to fight against that, get back, get ahead and then put the pressure on them the rest of the half.”
On What They Wanted to do on the Last Possession
“Well we wanted to get Jackson to turn the corner to get to the rim. He got to the paint but they kind of got him across and somebody got a hand on it and batted it out of bounds after it bounced off of him. But we had the ball in Mitch’s (Hahn) hands first then we got it to Jackson on the turn, we didn’t quite get the turn that we needed. If he would have gotten downhill a little more, I think that it could have been an and-one but just didn’t get the turn.”