Colorado - Oregon State Quotes

Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle 

Opening Statement
"Really good win. Impressive, impressive defensive effort again by our guys, I gotta tip my hat to them. [They] really responded to the challenge that gave him earlier this week. We put back-to-back [good] efforts together. We weren't our best offensively tonight. I thought we were a little sloppy with the ball, especially that second half. [We] Didn't shoot it particularly well -- 41%. But when you can win going away, shooting 41% and turning the ball over 13 times you know, you're doing something really good on the other end. I'm proud of them. It's just one game. It's just one weekend. We took care of business. Now it's time to take this show on the road and go to LA and play to the best teams and most talented teams normally. So we'll see what the future holds -- the immediate future. That's all I'm concerned about right now. We'll give these guys tomorrow off. They deserve it. They've worked hard this week. [We have] A little bit of momentum going right now. So we have to keep it."

On F Luke O'Brien's progression this season
"Luke's giving us everything he's got effort-wise. He's active -- He gets his hands on a lot of balls. I still think if he would go get rebounds with two hands. He sometimes goes with one and I haven't seen any Velcro on his hands yet, and I don't think it's gonna be there. When he starts going to get rebounds with two hands you add another couple [rebounds], two or three to his total. I love his activity. His confidence. He's not playing afraid to make a mistake. The first couple years of Luke's career, he was so worried about making mistakes and now he recognizes when he makes him but he just plays through them. That's a really positive thing for him. It's not something that should go unnoticed because that shows great growth for Luke O'Brien. I'm really proud of him for that.'
 
On G KJ Simpson's return tonight
"No doubt. KJ -- everybody knows how important he is to us. There's gonna be nights he scores a ball game -- we talked about balance. [That's] The first number I looked at because I knew he made nice passes and he was really unselfish tonight. Six assists is a good number for him. [I] still would like that turnover number to be two rather than four. He's growing. There's going to be nights we need him to score. There's going to be nights we need him to distribute and play a great point guard game. Seven rebounds are fantastic. He's had 10 before. He got a double-double [with] points and rebounds. So I thought KJ -- it was it's good to have him back. I was a little nervous going into Oregon I'm not gonna lie without him."
 
On having 15 assists on 21 FGM
"Exactly. If we shoot the ball tonight like we are capable of shooting the ball, we have 18 to 20 assists. I really believe that. So you're right. 15 assists on 21 baskets when we're sharing the ball. It's really important that we continue to do that because the further you go into conference play, the harder it is to score. When we go to LA it's going to be difficult to get buckets. There's 16 games now -- 17 games. In the books. On film. People have scouted you. they know your weaknesses. They know your strengths. They try to take stuff away from you. Our players need to just make plays for each other -- continue to share the ball. Just do what the game dictates that they do. Whether that's in a ball screen or on a fast break -- wherever in the half court. We need to get more movement. I thought we were a little stagnant offensively tonight. You have to move and get the defense moving to get good shots in the paint."

On what the team has been doing that has helped hold their opponents to a combined 83 points over the last two games
"[They're] Locked into the scouting report. Look you look at what [Oregon G] Will Richardson was averaging coming in here and [Oregon C] N'Faly Dante and what they got. Pretty impressive. Then you look at [Oregon State G Dexter] Akanno and [Oregon State F Glenn] Taylor and [Oregon State G Jordan] Pope and what they were averaging combined coming in here. And what they got tonight. Pretty impressive. So they've taken the scouting report, and we've locked down the best players on the other team scoring-wise. [CU Director of Audio Broadcasting] Mark Johnson told me [that] in conference games, a combined 83 points in two games back to back hasn't been done since the 40s. It's pretty impressive. So you can do it nonconference because you get some of those 'buy' games with lower-level teams. It might be a little bit easier but you get into conference play and you lock people down like we have the last two games, good things happen."
 
On not letting their opponents back in the game
"That's the key. It's so -- you're fighting human nature. You want your players not to play the scoreboard [but] to play their possession. Our guys have done that in the last few games. That's why we've not let them back in -- not let runs come. They cut it to [a] 14 [deficit] a couple of times in the second half -- it was a 15-point lead at halftime. Should have been eighteen. [Oregon State G Dexter] Akanno made a hell of a step back three. I can live with that. To me, that was great defense by [Colorado G] J'Vonne Hadley. Sometimes you get to play good defense and they score. The key is keeping the intensity level up and the focus level up for 40 minutes and we've done that back-to-back games now."
 
On Nique Clifford
“I think what I liked about Nique is he's taking what the defense gives him, and if he's open, he shoots it. In the second half, Adela was closing out to him in the corner, and he drove it, which is exactly what you do in five-man is coming at him.
 
On offense
“We made more free throws than our opponent's shot. That's one of our game goals. The first time we've done that in a long time. I can't remember the last time we did that. And we still shot 66% from the line. So when we start making our free throws, we start making shots we're capable of. This team offensively can be pretty explosive. But when we're not, you got to rely on the other end, and we've been able to do that.”
 
On Jalen Gabiddon
“We are just letting nature take its course on letting the body heal. We are waiting for his knee to get the swelling out. I'm hoping he can play the Washington weekend. Jalen probably won't play next weekend. That would be my guess. I just listened to our trainer, and our trainer listens to our doctors, and we have to get that knee stabilized. It doesn't need surgery, which is good news. So we just have to let nature take its course. We're on top of it. He's working daily to get that thing stronger and stabilized.”
 
On Tristan Da Silva
“He is a matchup problem for other teams. When Lawson's in there, and we start the game, Tristan is at three spots for us, and then he'll go from the three to the five sometimes or three to the four. So, when Lawson comes out, and he and Javon Hadley are in there or guys like Luke or even one of our other perimeter guys, he's a matchup problem, especially when he's at the five because now he can pick and pop, he can be on the perimeter, and he can drive the big guys. We posted him up against in the first play in the second half, we wanted to post him up at the start of the game, but we didn’t get the tip so he can post up perimeter guys when he's hit the three. The easiest position for him to play and for opponents to have him play is four, but when he's at three and five, he's a matchup nightmare.” 
 
On moving forward
“I look back at the Cal game. It still stings, but we can do nothing about that now. So our guys learn from it. It gets harder and harder to win games as conference play goes on, and you go on the road. You're playing in the top half of the league. You know we've not been playing the top half of the league. So we got that coming down the road, so we'll see what we're made of when we go to LA next weekend.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Colorado Players

 

Jr., F Tristan da Silva

On the defense improving
“In practice, we've been going back to the basics defensively especially. For us, it just comes down to guarding the ball, being a gap help, and then being an outside too and then knowing our rotations playing, with maximum effort and energy on defense, and having great talk. We realized over the past two games when we do that and we get easy transitions and easy offense it's way more fun to play. I feel like if we stick with that, it's gonna be a fun season for us.”
 
On their performance in the last two games
“I'm really proud of all of the guys. We've been talking about consistency at the beginning of the season, where we're kind of up and down, up and down so I feel like it's important for us to kind of get back to what we need to do to stay consistent. I feel like we've proven those things that are important for us in the past couple of games.”
 
On their mentality 
“We've been going back to basics and when we guard the ball and we play defense like we know we're capable of, we're just having more fun out there and that's the only motivation I feel like we need as a group because we all are a really tight group, we all love each other so having fun on the court out there is the main goal for us.”
 
On his shooting game
“I felt like our team in general, coaches give me the trust to shoot the ball to make plays for myself or for others. I have a great group of guys around me that share the ball and I also like to share the ball too. I trust everybody to hit shots, to make their layups, and to make plays for each other so credit goes to everybody.”
 

Jr., G Luke O’Brien

On his 20 rebounds 
I thought a Cal I had zero rebounds and I took that very personally for me because I pride myself on rebounding offensively and defensively. This week in practice, that's what I did, I was boxing out. Some of the rebounds came to me but that's been a very big focal point for me this year.”
 
On looking forward to the next two games on the road
“We’ve got to build on it, obviously but I think we celebrate this today and then we go right back to work. We had a really tough week of practice this week and I know we're gonna have that on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday for that and we just can't get complacent. I think that was the biggest issue for us is we beat teams like Tennessee and then we were like, oh we're good and then we played UMass and lose and stuff like that so we can't get complacent with these Oregon wins. We know USC and UCLA are huge so we're just going to go one day at a time.”
 
On the defense
“We took pride on it like every possession. We talked about before the game like the Oregon game, I think every possession, it should be fun for us to get stops. We should enjoy getting stops all the time. Anytime we get to a ball screen we're yelling, we're getting high for our teammates. Anytime we're jumping to the ball, anytime we're in gaps, just anything we can do to get high energy and just every possession we just want to get one stop and then next one just build on it.”