Colorado-UIC Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement:
“It was a tough, hard fought win against a really talented UIC team. Those kids are tough. That (Jordan) Blount kid. Holy cow. He was coming off of a career high and was terrific again tonight. Their guards can really score. (Marcus) Ottey got going. Defensively we were okay, not great. We have a lot of room for improvement after a game like this. We did what we had to do to win the game. We rebounded the ball well. We had some offensive rebounds which we knew was going to be a key for this game. We have to take better care of the ball and defend better than we did tonight. On a positive note, we took six charges and turned them over 24 times. Six of those 24 were obviously charges. We knew there were going to be opportunities to step up and take them (charges) tonight and our guys did. We will take the win and move on. We’ve got to learn to handle pressure better. We had 16 turnovers which is too many. 11 is our number. These guys are the first team that came and pressured us in our building and we didn’t handle it very well.”
On Defense
“They had great spacing. With their top five guys out there, they had two guys that are great shooters. Ottey is not a great shooter. He made one, but we will live with that. Blount is more of a driver. He didn’t take a three. (Travell) Washington is not a three-point shooter. The guys who are guarding those three guys have to give us better gap help than they did tonight. It starts with jumping to the ball and shrinking the floor. That way, when those drivers drive they are going into help. We have to shrink the floor better than we did tonight. Our help side was not good. We switched ball screens. Early in the game, the first five baskets they got were basically their guards taking our bigs to the rim. We knew we were going to be challenged guarding the ball. We worked on it in practice. We didn’t do that very well. Those are areas that we can improve upon.”
On McKinley Wright
“He is just a winner. He makes winning plays. We know that. I don’t want to nitpick. McKinley had nine assists and three turnovers. That is a 3:1 (assist to turnover) ratio. That is pretty darn good for a point guard. Two of those three turnovers are things he can get rid of easily. The handoff that he flubbed and the poke from behind that he got. You eliminate that and now he has nine assists and one turnover. We expect so much of him. He just makes winning plays down the stretch, whether it is offensively or defensively. He made a big time shot in the lane and came down and took a charge which was a big momentum shift for our team. He is terrific. I can’t say enough good things about him. He had 21 points, 9 assists, and 6 rebounds. I am nitpicking.”
On Tyler Bey
“He had fifteen rebounds. Are you kidding me? We will take that every night. He got more minutes tonight because of Evan’s (Battey) foul trouble. Lucas (Siewert) had two fouls in the first half as well. Tyler’s minutes were a little heavier tonight than normal which he probably needed because he needs to get in better shape, but Tyler was terrific. When I talk about playing smart defensively, there are a few guys who need to take that to heart. Tyler has the ability to be one of the best defenders on not just our team, but in the Pac-12. He has first team all-defense ability. He is playing smart and understanding who is a driver and who is a shooter. He got out of position some times. Tyler is learning still. We forget that McKinley is a sophomore and Tyler is a sophomore. We expect so much of them because they are so important to our team. We have to keep getting better. I am pleased with Tyler’s performance tonight.”
On Individual Defense
“What our players have to do is have more individual pride defensively when they are guarding the ball. Certainly gap help is a part of it, but if I lock a guy up one-on-one, keep him out of the lane, guard my yard, and play with my arms out so we aren’t getting hand checked calls, we don’t need gap help. It comes down to me as a player taking pride in whoever I am guarding. I am going to find my distance to keep him in front of me and make him make tough shots in the lane and not let him get by me to the rim and not have my hand down and have him shoot a three in my face. When you play against good teams and good players who can shoot the three and drive it, you have some challenges. We have to take those challenges on personally a little bit better than we are. Sometimes we are relying on our help rather than relying on going “mono e mono”. We work on it in practice, but we need to continue to work on it.”
On Being Away From Home until January 10th
“I think nine of our next 11 games are away from the Event Center. We will be tested right now over the next month and a half. We have two games at home in mid-January. The rest of them are away from here. We better understand mental toughness and physical toughness, and handle adversity when we are on the road. We have to be able to do that because it isn’t going to be easy. We play some really quality opponents. Certainly New Mexico is in Albuquerque. In Hawaii, we have some challenges and when we start league play we have 5 of 7 on the road. We will find out if we have grown and how much we’ve grown up. We don’t have to win all those game. We just have to figure out how to win the next one.”
On Defensive Concerns
“We are not where we need to be defensively. That is a concern of mine as we head into this stretch. We’ve shown it in flashes. We just haven’t shown it on a consistent basis against quality teams. We’re going to see some quality teams and we have to get better. The one thing about our team that is nice is that we’re explosive offensively. We can try to outscore teams, but I don’t want to get into that position. When you’re on the road and you shoot 5-for-19 from the three-point line, you may not get to the foul line 33 times. You put a lot more pressure on your offense when your defense is not getting stops. Again, I sound like a broken record, but now it’s a matter of understanding it and going out and doing it. If they’re making shots over our hands and they’re not at the rim laying it in, I can live with it. Blount made some really tough shots tonight in the lane. I can live with those. I can’t live with the ones where he gets to the rim going right, and we know he’s going right. That’s the part about playing smart that I’m talking about.”
On Daylen Kountz
“Daylen twisted his ankle a couple days ago in practice. Eli (Parquet) was our first sub off of the bench because Daylen didn’t practice yesterday. He practiced a little bit, but not very much. He was a little hampered with an ankle and should be fine by Tuesday. We’re going to need guys like Daylen Kountz, guys like Namon Wright, and guys like Eli Parquet. We’re going to need them at some point in this next stretch away from home. We’re going to need them to be ready mentally and physically because you never know what’s going to happen when you get onto the road. I like our depth. I believe in those guys even though their minutes maybe weren’t as heavy tonight. We’re going to need them to be locked in here, and when their opportunity comes, they need to make the most of it. Daylen made a nice play at the end of the first half. He didn’t get more minutes because of his ankle.”
Colorado Players
McKinley Wright, So., GOn if he thought UIC was ever going to miss
“Nope. Seemed like they couldn’t miss but we kind of expected it. We knew how good they were and how hard they play so we have to do a better job of guarding.”
On if there’s a point in the game where he knows to takeover
“No. My teammates just do a good job of helping me create shots for myself, get open, and be able to attack the rim. Without those guys I’m not going to be able to do that, so all the credit goes to them, them being able to help me out down the stretch. I don’t think it’s anything I think about personally. I just think these guys do a good job of getting me going and talking me up.”
On having the mindset of getting to the free throw line
“Of course. That’s one of the things I want to try and be at least 90% from the free throw line. I think when I get fouled, I’m going to make the free throws and same goes with this guy (points to Tyler Bey), and everybody else. We’re confident at the free throw line so being able to get to the rim and get fouled is a huge advantage for us.”
On how to improve defensively going forward
“One of our coaches in the locker room made a really good point. When a guy has the ball, the other four guys have to jump to the ball and be in the gap. A lot of times tonight we were getting “iso-drived” and we didn’t have much help behind us. That goes for everybody, so we have to do a better job of helping each other out and having each other’s back. I think we didn’t showcase that tonight but down the stretch we’ll be better, and we’ll watch film, and we’ll get better.
Tyler Bey, So., F
On message from coaching on how to improve defense
“They were shooting 58%. Coach told us they were shooting 58%. So, we just have to guard the three-point line, play better ball screen defense, and those types of things.”
On not winning games defensively
“It’s really frustrating because we want to be a defensive team and rebound but right now if we’re playing the conference, we wouldn’t be playing how we want to. We wouldn’t be winning as much games as we are right now. I think we’re going to get there, we just have to take time to figure it out.”
On his strong rebounding
“I honestly just come into the game and do whatever I have to do to win. I’m trying to be consistent every game and that’s one thing me and coach talked about before the season started.”
UIC Head Coach Steve McClain
On why Colorado was the better team today
I think defensively we also knew what they wanted to do. They want to get to the rim and do it at a high level. I feel like that’s what created it. I would love to have played that game and just let the kids play. There are a lot of good players out there. Sometimes the game never had any flow to it because the game got stopped too much.
On three players scoring 57 of the team’s 72 points
“One thing our system is built on is they are going to take something away. We are not going to worry about what they take away and we are going to go with the guys that can score. I think most nights if you have three to four guys in double figures, you are about where you should be in a high level game. I am probably going to look at the film and wonder why my guards didn’t shoot it a little bit more. Some of that is, my two bigs are young. One is a freshman and one is a junior college kid. He is still trying to figure it out. As they develop, we are going to be able to get more scoring out of them.”
On nonconference schedule
“There is no question. When we are done with our nonconference play, we will have played two Atlantic Tens on the road, an ACC on the road, a Pac-12 on the road, a Big East on the road. Our home games have been the one, two, and three teams picked in the Missouri Valley. We played Radford on the road who beat Texas at Texas and Notre Dame at Notre Dame. This is all about growth. We are in a one-bid league. We have to go try to figure out our issues now. Don’t wait until January and February and then you find out your issues and it is too late. We can find out our weaknesses and our strengths. We came on the road and ended up shooting 59 percent. We threw up a couple threes at the end. Those are the things that as you get on the road in league play, you are going to gain confidence. It doesn’t matter if we are at home or on the road, we are going to shoot a high percentage. I just think it is good for our team.
On shooting the most efficient game by a Colorado opponent this season
“I think our guards can play. I think sometimes people say ‘It’s the Pac-12 and it’s the Horizon League.’ I think my three guards can play in a lot of leagues. They play together and they play at a good pace. I know how it is as a coach. You are trying to tell them, these guys can play. Well my guys don’t listen sometimes. I knew it was going to be a high level game. Their little point guard is as fast as any guy we have played against. I thought our guys did a good job on him most of the night. I think their size at times got us. We are not going to see that in January and February.”
On the difference made by Colorado
“They made their free throws and we didn’t in the first half. We had a couple opportunities where it got 74to 70, we had a wide open three and it doesn’t go in. They went down, we foul, and the game kind of got away from us. It comes down to making plays. At the end, they made more than we did.”
On the amount of fouls called
“I think you get excited watching how fast they were coming and how fast we were going. That is what people want to watch. I think it is a tough game out there for the officials too because these guys are high level athletes flying up and down the court. They are trying to stay with them and that is hard. The game had very little flow to it especially in the second half.”
On any surprises from Colorado today
“I have great respect for Tad. They run a great offense. They run great actions. They are the leading field goal percentage team in the Pac-12 right now. Their players play hard. I thought they were more aggressive defensively than I have seen them being on the film. I think that is because they prepared. I think also, people know me. We didn’t come out here to just have a good time in Boulder even though I love the place. We came to win the game. Those are the games that make you better. I am proud of our kids and how we came in and handled ourselves.”
On returning to Colorado to coach against the Buffaloes
“People forget that Jeff Bzdelik had this in his contract that this had to be built. It broke ground before he left and it was probably a good thing it did. I still have great love for this place. Nate Tomlinson, it was great seeing him. Austin Dufault’s parents had texted me that they were coming to the game. A couple of my former Wyoming players were here. I’ve seen a lot of people. I think it makes you feel good as a coach when you walk in and people say, ‘Coach, it’s great to have you back.’ I think we did a lot to build the foundation to what the success Tad and his staff who came in and did a great job have taken off and built on. Alec Burks and Cory Higgins, I stay in touch will all of those guys. My son is thinking about going to school here. I have a great respect for this program, city, and community. It was a big part of our life for a while and I haven’t forgotten that.