Colorado-Arizona State Quotes
vs
Grace College (Ind.)
Oct 19 (Sun)
12 p.m.
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“What a hard fought win by a group of guys that you can sense coming together as a group and galvanizing around each other. That was a good team we beat tonight, we did it without Evan Battey in the second half obviously, we did it without Shane Gatling for most of the game, in foul trouble, makeshift lineups, and our guys just found a way. We played with great toughness and outrebounded a very good Arizona State team who crushed us on the boards back in Tempe when we saw them in January. We’re six and six, we don’t play again until Sunday. It’s time to regroup, get ourselves healthy, hopefully have a couple good days of practice and get ready for a pretty good Arizona team that’s going to come in here hungry.”
On team’s strong second half
“It’s not me, I wish I could say it was me or our staff. It’s our players. When your players decide to lock in like they did tonight, and like they have really the last four games, and dig in defensively and rebound, play with the toughness they’ve been playing with, that’s what changes things. The credit goes to our players, not our coaches.”
On main focus tonight
“Before we took the floor I said ‘guys we need to attack the paint offensively, and the stat I’m looking at at the end of the game is points in the paint, and we have to have more than they have’ and we did. And again the credit goes to our players. They took that challenge, they did it, and that’s what you have to do against Arizona State.”
On Tyler Bey’s performance
“He took it on as a challenge tonight, Tyler is a guy that loves challenges. I thought he and McKinley were warriors tonight. Obviously McKinley with the ball late and Tyler rebounding the ball, those two kids are special and are really separating themselves in terms of what they can do to help this team win.”
“We’ve got a lot of weapons on this team. We may not be the deepest team, we weren’t tonight. We’re not as deep as we thought we would be when the season started but we’re figuring out a way. These guys just keep battling and keep fighting. And as a coach, you want to see improvement daily, weekly, monthly, and I think we’re starting to see that.”
On team’s perseverance
“We didn’t use youth as an excuse early, we’re not going to use injuries as an excuse now. We’re just going to try to find a way. We said this going back to even before the Oregon State game. We said the two things we are going to focus on are getting better every day, and figuring out how to win the next game. And it’s almost like when I said this to them and put it in those terms, it's almost like a calm came over them.”
On in-game adjustments for three-point shooting
“I thought our players as the game went on did a much better job of knowing their personnel and knowing what guys do. Dort’s threes early did not concern me. He’s a capable shooter but he’s not going to beat you from three. Cherry can beat you from three. Rob Edwards can beat you from three. Remy Martin can beat you from three. The whole key for Arizona State was to keep the ball in front of you. And we really did a great job.”
On approved contract extension from Board of Regents and support from the administration
“Look, you cannot be successful in this business unless you have administrators that you work for that support what you’re doing. It gives me a lot of confidence as the coach here that I don’t have to worry about the future. I said when I got hired here that this was a destination job. This is where I want to be and where I want to finish my career. And we’ve got a lot of unfinished business to do and when they give you that vote of confidence I think it feels good, it makes our players feel good. I think it makes our recruits feel good. My job is to make sure that that is a warranted decision that they made. I’m very appreciative of the people I work for. I’m appreciative of our fans. I'm appreciative of being the head coach of the University of Colorado every single day I come to work.”
“The thing I love about Rick is that he is as much of a competitor as an Athletic Director as any coach or player we have. He’s passionate about what he does and wants to win and compete for championships. I just appreciate his passion and his competitiveness and I think that rubs off on the coaches that work for him and I think it rubs off on our student-athletes.”
On stigma of Pac-12 being a bad conference
“It’s not a bad league, it’s a young league. I think out of 32 leagues in the country we’re 31st in terms of youth. We’ve lost a lot of players over the last two to three years in the NBA. So you’ve got teams that are trying to find themselves in November and December, us being one of them, that did not have as good of non-conference schedules. And that’s all you’re judged on is your non-conference performance. Some people scheduled well, some people did not schedule well. But that’s why we’re not getting the respect is because of November and December, not because we’re not good teams. Colorado today, February 13th, is a heck of a lot better than we were on December the 13th. I think it’s youth as a league, and there’s nothing we can do about it other than try and get better and hopefully keep some of these really good players around.”
Colorado Players
McKinley Wright, So., G
On The Timing of The Team’s 4 Game Conference Win Streak“Yeah it’s perfect timing, especially after our tough start at the beginning of the season. It’s either win or go home and we’ve come together to keep fighting.”
On What the Difference Has Been Over These Last 4 Games
“I think the biggest difference has been mental toughness, earlier in conference play we’ve only been playing for one half. Now we’ve come together to win because we want to win. We talk about our defense every day in practice and every film session. We’ve got to be a two half team and I think we’ve been showcasing that over these past few games.”
On Getting a Shot at Redemption against Arizona State
“I couldn’t wait for this game, I was so excited to come out here and play.”
On Guarding #1 Remy Martin
“It’s tough, especially because he is one of the fastest players in our conference. It’s hard though, I just try to keep my distance and use my body because I’m a little bigger than him. It’s tough, but I’m up for any challenge like that.
On What’s Been The Change in Their Approach to Each Game
“It started with Coach Boyle, he told us that he will never give up on us and that he loves us. When you hear that from your head coach, it gives us the confidence to go out and do our thing. We’ve just been trying to win ever since then and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
On Dealing With Adversity and Recent Injuries
“We’ve got so many pieces on this team, and Coach always tells us that we don’t have a go to man, and that the go to man is the open man. I believe in every single one of these guys, and they believe in me. We try to get each other the ball in open spots for open shots. When Dallas went down coach said next man up, and everybody’s been playing well since.”
On His Late Three Pointer
“It was crazy, I don’t know how to describe it. When I hit that shot and saw buff nation go crazy it was exciting. I was excited to see it go through. It was a big shot for us and I think it kind of killed them.”
Tyler Bey, So., G/F
On Grabbing 17 Rebounds Against 4th Best Rebounding Team“Today I wanted to rebound for my teammates and on defense especially, because Arizona State is a good offensive rebounding team, and that’s how they win a lot of their games.”
On Getting a Shot at Redemption Against Arizona State
“This game was very motivating, because last time we didn’t get to play how we wanted to play and we knew we were better than that and we showed that tonight.”
Arizona State Head Coach Bobby Hurley
On losing the lead in the second half“In the last fifteen minutes we just didn’t guard anybody, whether it was zone or man. Then the breakdowns occurred, obviously credit to Colorado. There is a reason that McKinley Wright was going to be a possible player of the year candidate coming into the season and Tyler Bey. Those two sophomores, whoa, they got something good with those two. Twenty-two points and seventeen rebounds he had sixteen defensive rebounds. I think twenty-two as a team so when you have those kind of guys putting out those kind of performances then you are going to get the results you got.”
On whether or not he was pleased with the shot selection
“I was kind of focused on our defense so much that we couldn’t generate any stops. Then that lead to them getting easy baskets, they drove the lane right down the heart of our defense, they just had it all going at that end of the floor. We were really wildly different than we were in the first twenty-five minutes at that end of the floor. We couldn’t get the ball inside as effectively in the second half, there were momentum plays when Lugentz made the steal but didn’t make the lay-up and they dunked it the other way. Things like that were happening that you can’t afford to happen when you are on the road.”
On what they couldn’t do to beat CU
“I think that we were in a good place guarding whether that was zone or man. I don’t know if it was 44-39 or 42-37, we were in really good shape at under sixteen. From there they just got in the lane, especially McKinley Wright. They made some tough shots too late clock down the stretch, there were some inside a few seconds of the shot clock that helped. McKinley Wright’s three was a pretty big momentum three.”
On what he told the team at half with the game tied
“Just that I thought we did what we were supposed to do but we were getting out rebounded and we were minus ten in the paint. Battey did some really good things it is unfortunate that he got hurt in that game but he did very well coming off the bench. He gave them some production in the paint. We are a team that when we have played well we have outscored teams in the lane. I think that we missed a lot of layups, Luguentz had a couple and Romello had a couple that didn’t go down. We can’t control the lane and rebound, we got out rebounded again. In our last game against Washington we won those two categories and it was a different outcome.”