Home Postgame: Wake Forest coach Danny Manning on loss to Virginia Tech
Sports

Postgame: Wake Forest coach Danny Manning on loss to Virginia Tech

Contributors

Wake Forest coach Danny Manning and players talk with reporters after the Demon Deacons’ loss to Virginia Tech in the 2017 ACC Tournament.

 

THE MODERATOR: We’ll go ahead and start with a brief opening statement from Coach.

COACH MANNING: I thought this afternoon Virginia Tech came out, especially the second half, and made more hustle effort plays than we did, which is disappointing. They went out, and they scored 62 points on us in the second half, which is far too many. And they’re a very talented offensive team, but we have to provide much more resistance defensively than what we did.

I thought there were times when we were able to get stops, which weren’t that many in the second half, that they were able to come up with an offensive rebound if we didn’t finish the possession.

I thought they came out and took it to us and did what they needed to do to win the ball game.

Q. Did they just heat up in the second half, or did they make certain offensive adjustments on you in the second half?
COACH MANNING: I’m sure Buzz did make some adjustments, and they did some different things, but regardless of what they did, 62 points is still too many points in a half to give up. We have to do a much better job of staying in front of the basketball. They had 38 points in the paint. They had 20 at halftime.

And LeDay had a great ball game, but there were other guys, other guards on their team that spent too much time in the paint as well.

Q. Bryant, same question, and also when they start knocking down threes like that, does that put more pressure on you guys offensively to try to match that?
BRYANT CRAWFORD: We try and fly around the shooters. Sometimes we’re going to break down on defense, but our whole mindset was to just fly around and get to close out the shooters. I mean — yeah, I mean, them hitting threes and putting points on the board makes us need to put points on the board as well, but we also needed to get stops, which we didn’t.

COACH MANNING: The thing about it too is they had 31 field goals, we had 31 field goals. They made ten threes, we made ten threes. They shot 35 free throws, and we shot 21. So we have to do a better job of staying in front of ball.

I know late we put them on the line a lot because we’re trying to get back in the game and playing catch-up, but a lot of times, they spent a lot of time in the paint early on in the second half.

Q. This is for Danny and both the players. You’ve done everything you can do now, and all you can do is wait until Sunday. Do you feel like you’ve put together a good enough resume to get in, or is there a little bit of trepidation here as to what might happen?
COACH MANNING: I’ve been very fortunate and blessed to be around this game for a very long time. Sometimes it’s not very logical. So we’re going to sit back and wait. That’s our reality right now.

Q. Brandon, what do you feel about your chances? Do you feel like you’ve put together a good enough resume?
BRANDON CHILDRESS: I think some losses early in the season kind of like hurt us a little bit, but I think down the line during ACC play we picked up a few big wins, especially against — upsetting at Louisville and now Virginia Tech. Being 9-9 in ACC play, I think that helped us out a lot. Hopefully, we get in. If not, we’ve still got to be ready to play no matter if it’s NIT or in the NCAA Tournament.

Contributors

Contributors

Have a guest column, letter to the editor, story idea or a news tip? Email editor Chris Graham at [email protected]. Subscribe to AFP podcasts on Apple PodcastsSpotifyPandora and YouTube.