Colorado University Athletics
Colorado- Colorado Mines Quotes
vs
Providence
Nov 14 (Fri)
7 p.m.
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Jabari Foul Trouble to begin
“I don't know it's a bad omen. It's an opportunity to learn, and last year, Jabari had foul trouble, but it didn't affect our team as much because we were so deep, you know, at that position, and we had so many answers. Well, this year, we're going to need him to play heavier minutes. And you know, as you guys know, usually when a guy picks up a foul in the first half or two fouls, I'll sit him the rest of the half but I wanted to let Jabari play. He picked up his third and even kept him in after that. And you know, my message is, Jabari needs to play with great energy, but he just can't identify so much with the easiest good score. We know that anybody can identify his game with his offensive production because there's going to be nights like he had a night where he was struggling to score the ball and that's okay. He can really help this team if he defends and rebounds. That's one you just have to let go, and save it for another time. I don't want him to play tentative and play afraid to foul because then you can't help your team. But you got to play smart. And I think that fifth is an opportunity for him to learn that, with four fouls you gotta be really, really careful, especially on those offensive rebounds. If it's close, give it up and let it go down and get our stop. Look, this is an opportunity for all of our guys to learn and Jabari is young. Tristan is a young player, and they played the most of any of our freshmen last year. But Nick, Luke O'Brien, they're freshmen in terms of experience. We got a lot of young guys out there and so these are opportunities for us to learn. It's not about winning and losing right now. Obviously, we want to win every time we step on the floor, but it's about learning and improving and figuring out how to stay out of foul trouble, which you know, Jabari and I talked about.”On Lovering’s Performance
“He's gonna be a special, special player at Colorado. He's got such great length. He's got great feet. You know, he made some really good contests in the first half. The second half their point guard made a nice little step back on him. And Lovering is like a sponge. He just keeps learning. He's coachable. Evan has done a great job of kind of mentoring him and helping him understand. He's gonna be a good player. And I think it's gonna happen this year. There's gonna be growing pains with him, too. You know, the first time he got the ball on the block, he got knocked off balance, he's got to learn to play lower, but use that seven foot length that he has. We’ve played him and Evan together a little bit in the second half tonight. We'll try that at times this year. Lovering’s gonna be he's gonna be special.”On Team Turnovers
“Another positive from tonight. At seven minutes and 32 seconds, I think there was a media timeout. I remember looking up we had seven turnovers at that time. And the rest of the half, we didn't turn it over once. So 10 is a great number. They really adjusted and you can still play fast which we want to do and be under control and we just got a little careless in that first half with the ball but they adjusted and did a great job. So we will live with turn 10 turnovers every night, every night we play”On Team’s Versatility
"The thing I love about this team is our versatility. We started with Tristan (da Silva) at the three. With him and Jabari (Walker) and Evan (Battey), that's a formidable size because our guards aren't extremely big. This year, Javan Ruffin’s got some size, but K.J. Simpson is a little guy, Julian (Hammond III) is a little guy, Keeshawn (Barthelemy) a little guy. Eli's little but he plays big. With versatility, there's going to be times we can play a three-guard lineup and there's going to be times we can go with Evan and Lawson and Tristan or Jabari and really be big. That's what's going to be fun about coaching this team. On any given night it might call for a different lineup. That's what you're trying to get to right now. We haven't really gone with our top seven or eight guys versus everybody else in practice yet. We've had 20 practices. We mix it up every day. Those guards are used to playing with each other. With different bigs, we are used to playing with different wings and vice versa for our bigs and wings, they are playing with different guards every day. This year, you have injuries, you still have COVID (protocols) that could put a guy out for 10 games -- or 10 days -- I hope it's not 10 games. There's going to be some hurdles that we're going to have to overcome as this season unfolds. Now is the time to build depth and that's what we tried to do tonight."On Having Fans Back at CU Events Center
"It was great to have the fans back. Nobody appreciated them more than our players. We've all missed them. This was an exhibition -- it wasn't televised, it wasn't on the radio. Hopefully against Montana State (for the first regular season game), we can have this place rocking and rolling, close to being full and have a student section that's raucous. I thought for an exhibition it was a great start. The one thing we've learned for our football season is that fans are starved for coming out and seeing college athletics. I hope they will on November 9 have that (game) circled and because Montana State's a good basketball team. They return a lot of guys. They're going to force some issues for us. Tomorrow, we're going to watch film. We're going to do a lot of shooting (in practice), and then get ready for Nebraska on Sunday. It'll be a different animal than where we played tonight."On Nique Clifford’s Rebounding
“I talked to him today before the game. He's a sixth starter. I look at him as a starter right now because he's been our leading rebounder in practice. He led us in rebounding in Costa Rica. You know how much I applaud that and respect that. It's not a surprise he had seven boards. He was our second leading rebounder. I don't know how many minutes he played, but I look at rebounds per minute (where) he may have led us. Nique’s going to have a breakout year. He’s a really important part of this year's team. He's going to have nights where he scores the ball. He's like a freshman. He didn't play a lot of minutes last year. He's going through a lot of what these freshmen are going through. I think Luke (O’Brien) is as well. I don't worry about scoring with this team, as long as we figure out, on nights like this, how to get to the foul line and how to get the ball inside to Evan, Lawson, and our bigs."On K.J. Simpson’s Ability to Get to the Hoop
"He's got an unbelievable nose for the rim. He is in attack mode. We want him to be, especially in transition. He and Keyshawn -- in terms of speed, from baseline to baseline -- are as fast as (anyone). I'd like to see a faster backcourt than those two guys. K.J. is a guy that, when he gets on the open floor, we want him going downhill. He's got a great opportunity to finish. He can finish through traffic around guys. We want him pushing it. Even in the halfcourt we want him getting downhill. We ran that ball screen continuity with Evan and Lawson in there as two bigs. (K.J.) came off a ball screen, got downhill in the middle lane, and finished with his left (while he) got fouled. K.J. is going to be a dynamic player. He got the breakaway dunk. You're going to see a lot of plays like that from K.J. Simpson."
Colorado Players
K.J Simpson, Fr., G
On his first college game“I mean, I've never played with that many fans in an arena before. The atmosphere was crazy. And just like coach said, I'm pretty sure the other freshmen felt it too. The jitters the first game jitters playing in front of a big crowd. I mean, it was an exhibition game, but I mean, it felt like a real game. So yeah, it was what I expected.”
Evan Battey, Sr,. F
On how it feels to get a dominating win“Well, I think it shows our maturity, he (Tad Boyle) talks about me and Eli (Parquet) and the older guys on the team that were around when that last game happened. The game begins my freshman year and we talked about the score at halftime and you know, just us not wanting to come out with that same intensity, just wanted to get it higher so we can win.”
On Team’s defense and rebounding
“We're going to need that a lot this year. We're going to show on some nights and you know, that travels always so, I've spent (five) years in the program, I know how deep rebounding translates and to win this game so I'm going to keep pushing it to my guys.”