Colorado-Utah Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
On tonight's game“Oh, I'm not sure I’ve ever been more disappointed in a loss in my career. I mean, to have a game in hand like that and not finish it, and it’s not like we didn’t talk about the way that they could get back in the game, and at some point you gotta stop talking about things and you gotta do them. I know the mantra. You heard Mckinley, you heard Jeriah talk about the idea of finishing and tonight was the epitome of not finishing. Plummer got going, and we had no answer.”
On losing track of Alfonso Plummer
“Yeah we lost track of him in some scramble situations and we’re not aware of who’s who. Now, Utah put a really good shooting lineup in the game. Battin was in, who’s a good shooter, Larsson’s in who’s a good shooter. So, they got shooters on the floor. Now, Timmy Allen is more of a driver and we talked at the eight minute media timeout about, I think we were up 16 at the time, and I think we had 16 fouls, and we talked about there’s two ways they can get back in this game. Number one is if we foul them and put them at the foul line. Number two is we let them get hot from three. They did both. I think the next time out it was a five point game and they had made four three’s and shot two free throws. That’s 14 points. It goes from 19 to 14, or to five excuse me, after a 14 point deficit. We got, I thought offensively, we got a little bit soft. We put no foul pressure on them tonight. They were switching our ball screens. We were switching their ball screens with certain lineups and their bigs could guard our guards. Our bigs could not guard their guards. You know, Plummer came off with his left hand on a couple switches and got downhill and got to the rim. We got to know he’s left handed and we got to know, we got to take away his threes. We didn’t do either one. We didn’t get on his left hand and we didn’t take away his threes. Kid got hot and credit goes to him. You know, I say this tongue and cheek but if Larry would’ve played him in the first half he would’ve had 48.”
On if there is a correlation with not being able to close the game out in the second half
"Not finishing, absolutely there's failure. It's finishing possessions on defense just as much as it is finishing possessions on offense. Finishing on offense means we have to put the ball in the hole-- we missed some bunnies there and we didn't put foul pressure on them. We're a team that gets the foul line a lot, tonight we couldn't get to the foul line, the whistle wasn't there. So, we have to finish, we have put the ball in the hole and offensive rebound. We didn't do a very good job-- eight offensive rebounds, and two of them are team rebounds, so six offensive rebounds on a lot of missed shots. So, offensive rebounding is something, again, that I've talked about a lot with this team. On nights when you're not shooting the ball well in the second half-- I mean, we made 10 threes in the first half, 13 for the game, that's enough to win a game. When you don't guard and you let a guy like Plummer get hot-- that kid broke Klay Thompson's record in the PAC 12 tournament last year, 11 threes in the game. So, it's not like we didn't know, we knew. It was kind of a last ditch effort on their part to put him in and we let him get going. So ,that's on us. Utah, I'm sure if you ask them, they feel like they gave the game to us in Salt Lake City, and we feel like we gave the game to them here in Boulder. Maybe we're both right, but I don't know. I'm really, really disappointed in not finishing. Look, I love our guys, I love this team. We have good guys, they're competitors, but we have to figure out how to finish and score the ball and get to the free throw line or get offensive rebounds when we're not shooting it well, offensively. But again, (against) Washington we score 80 points, tonight we score 74-- that's enough to win a game, if we guard. If we score 54 points, I'll point to our offense, but this is a tough one guys."
On making sure that this stretch of games doesn't turn into something bigger like it did at the end of the season last year
"The way you do that-- number one, I don't think it has anything to do it last year and I'm not even worried about that, but the way you do that is you come back the next day, and we'll take tomorrow off, but you come back the next practice and you get after it. You get better and you learn and you improve, and then you just figure out how you win the next game. That's Arizona State on Thursday night and they're a talented team. They have some guys that can get hot like Plummer did tonight. We're going to have to hang our hat on our defense and our toughness. This loss is not going to affect our confidence, I truly, truly believe that. It has to a piss us off. It has to piss are guys off enough where they say, 'you know what, this is never going to happen again'. We have to get an edge to us like, 'this is unacceptable'. If we can do that, we'll be fine. If we don't, then the next game is gonna be tough because Arizona State is a good team."
On The Remaining Schedule
“If we get all our games in, we will play ten at home and ten on the road. If everybody else gets their 20 in, they will have 10 at home and 10 on the road. When they come, that is up to the schedule makers and obviously COVID rescheduling and all that sort of thing. Some teams may not get their twenty games in. Hopefully we will. This one stings because it was a home game that we had in hand. We just didn't finish. This stings. There is no way to sugarcoat this. It stings and it sucks. It has to piss us off enough to make sure it doesn't happen again.”
On Perimeter Defending
“We can't let foul trouble affect how we guard. Both McKinley and Eli were in foul trouble tonight. I don't think Eli has fouled out of a game at Colorado. Tonight was the first time. In the first half McKinley picked up a ticky-tack foul. A couple of them were legit. When you get in foul trouble you can't let in effect your aggressiveness. You just have to play smart. Sometimes the whistle goes in your favor and sometimes it doesn't. That is part of basketball. We are a team that is used to shooting a lot of free throws. Tonight we shot six. Why? I don't know. I will watch the film and see. Maybe we weren’t getting enough foul pressure on them. Maybe Utah has great defenders. I don't know. When you play close to 20 games and you are used to getting to the free throw lines a certain amount of times and then it doesn't happen, you have to figure out other ways. Offensive rebounding is one of them. And finishing when you are in the lane and the paint is another one and making threes. We made enough threes to win this game. We made 13. We’ll take that every night. We have to get better.”
On Keeshawn Barthelemy
“I told Keeshawn at halftime, ‘Keep playing aggressive on offense.’ He is a good offensive player. He is good in the pick and roll. He can score and pull up. He is a good shooter. He has to compete on defense and I thought Keeshawn did that tonight. He gave up a couple on Plummer I think. You have to look at D’Shawn (Schwartz) and Maddox (Daniels) and their perimeter defense. I thought in the first half those guys really struggled defensively. Keeshawn, if he will compete on defense and stay aggressive on offense, he can help this team. If there was a bright spot in tonight's game, and it is hard to look at bright spots after a game like that, but Keeshawn was probably one of them. His defensive intensity level has got to be rock solid. I thought he made a step forward in that tonight.”
Colorado Players
Mckinley Wright IV, G, Sr.
On overall emotions
“Emotions are everywhere. All we can do about it now is just reflect on it for a couple of hours and move on, learn from it. Back to the drawing board.”
On what went wrong during the 31 to 9 outscoring
“We just couldn't get anything to fall on offense and they made a lot of threes down the stretch. We couldn't get a stop and the outcome is what it is.”
On not letting the falling off at the end continue to happen
“We got to stay together. This one hurt. Obviously we were third in the Pac-12 standings, had an 18 point lead. And I had a chance to move up, had a chance to improve our record, and get some more recognition but obviously, that's down the drain. Now, I have to come back together and prepare for Arizona State, figure out a way to end.”
On Plummer’s effort to stop Colorado
“He had a couple threes in transition. He was coming off screens. He got fouled on one. He got downhill on switches, we had to find a way to level him off, and he got hot and made a bunch down the stretch.”
On making sure confidence isn’t lost as a team
“It’s the bond that we have. We're a really tight group. Nobody’s going to give up on each other, coaches are not going to give up on us. We know we're capable of. Coach, always stressed that we had to keep our foot on the gas, and tonight we let up and we let a guy get hot, and he made a bunch of threes down the stretch.”
Jeriah Horne, Sr., F
Overall thoughts on the game and what could have been better
“We just have got to finish games. Up 19 points, just got to find a way to close it out. They got hot with threes, so just figuring out a way to shut that down.”
On not being able to execute after a big rally
“I would actually say I felt like we kept our head. We missed some bunnies down the stretch, it's like that sometimes. They got going and we didn't, we didn't shut them down like we were supposed to do.”
On the mood in the locker room
“I mean it's definitely a tough loss. I think most important thing is, we were up 19 points. So, with that being said we were in a position to win the game. So I don't think that confidence wise we don't think that we're capable of performing like that it's just finishing the game. So these next couple of days and practice and stuff that's going to be the main thing like, you know, we started practice, strong, we got to finish the practice strong, you start a sprint strong and you got to.”
Utah Head Coach Larry Krystkowiak
Opening Statement
“The whole focus is to not quit. We don't make a game of it unless we can cut it to 10 or 12 and i thought that was imperative. There's no 19 point play. But they guys really moved the ball, we got a number of stops, we had an elite rebounding performance I thought defensive rebound where everybody guards. It's math. It's very fortunate that our guys didn't quit and fonso obviously hit a bunch of big shots. We are not going to throw in the towel until we are certain we don’t have a chance. There was plenty of optimism along the way.”
On how team stayed competitive in second half
“I told our guys late in the game that we've been through an awful lot, every team has and they deserve it. I think we've had 360 minutes of conference play, we've been ahead for like 210 of those minutes and the record wouldn’t indicate that. The way we worked this week, the improvement that we had I thought was really good and things didn't start out well. I think it was 10 three point shots made in the first half. We had a number of breakdowns and didn't really deserve the win and then I thought we cleaned things up in the second half.”
On defensive final play
“We were trying to switch everything I thought we were fortunate to get him to catch it, we didn’t want him to advance the ball. We had fouls to give, one foul to give at that point so if a guy were to catch the ball. We had all our guys on the three point line and it was really important that we didn’t foul.”
On controlling McKinley Wright IV
“He’s a physical guard, I thought our coaches did a really good job with the plan of throwing McKinley (Wright IV) different pitches. We had some switches that we played and then we got a little bit more aggressive with him because he is such an elite player. A big credit to all of our guys I thought it was great to be here and even on the glass, on the rebounds, and when we got them to miss in the second half, as opposed to the first half our guys did exactly what they needed to do. The biggest thing I thought was the ball really got moving. On offence we got the ball from side to side and Fonso (Alfonso Plummer) came in and he did his thing. We are super excited.”
On stopping Colorado’s offensive attack
“Colorado has three guys on their roster that you can’t give an open three to. Maddox, Walker and Horn, and I think 5 of the 10 first half errors were just the lack of concentration. We’ve got to be locked into those guys and make them put the ball down. We had a few occasions in the first half where we sucked in off of penetration with our switching plan which you saw in the first half. We had to double team and then our rotations were a little bit haphazard and we weren't getting it out to guys. Give credit to them, I think 4 of their first half 10 3’s they had a guy in their face so it was kind of a perfect storm. I thought the second half we were much more dialed in and aware of where those shooters were and we tried to make them put the ball on the floor.”
On technical in second half
“There’s a lot of things in the course of a game, sometimes it becomes a little bit focused on my part, but i thought there was an over and back call in the second half that they didn’t get and an official told me that he wasn’t able to get in position to see it. That cost us a basket. When that same official is standing on the line as we are dribbling across, whether it is 21 seconds or 20 seconds left on the shot clock I did not feel like that call had to be made because we were on the move and it was certainly a bang-bang call. I lost my cookies a little bit on that one but you're at the point in the game where whatever inspiration you get there's one guy that gets 10% more inspiration because of a technical foul then so be it. I didn’t go out there with the intent to do that. I am just fortunate that I didn’t take it another step and Coach Connor did a good job of making sure I didn’t get a second one, that’s where we are obviously looking at a different story here.”
On how team stepped up
“There were a lot of guys that stepped up. I thought Mickey a lightbulb kind of flipped on with him in that run. There’s a couple possessions in particular that Mickey had the ball in a trailer position and broke down the defense and had a hockey assist to Fonso (Alfonso Plummer) who made an assist to (Riley) Battin who hit a three. I think the biggest take away is when we move the ball, because that defensive team, that Colorado team is one of the top teams in our conference, and I thought in the first half and even in the second half there were some ill-advised shots which is something we are going to have to see. I have no problem if we are taking open ones and not turning it over, I thought that was the key. We got a little bit of momentum and felt that magic of what it’s like to have the ball popping. And when it coincides with shots going in, it gave us an awful lot of confidence.”