Q. Coach, I wonder if you could talk about the two freshmen guards. They seemed to hurt you on the penetrations. How dangerous are they moving forward here in the next few years?
JIM CHRISTIAN: Well, obviously, I mean, they took over the game, just by attacking the rim. The first time we played them, we did a great job of keeping them in front and then protecting the basket, walling up the basket, making them finish over us, and today we did an awful job of both. So they were going by people, and then our secondary defender was just not in the way, and because of it, they took over the game. So obviously moving forward, they’re two really good players, and they’re going to be — obviously continue to get better.
Q. To both of the players, I think you guys only had one field goal in the last nine minutes of the first half. What went wrong? What was the cause of the drought? And how much did that kind of knock you guys back?
STEFFON MITCHELL: We stopped moving the ball. We weren’t making extra passes like we did in the first couple minutes of the game, and then we started letting our offense affect our defense.
JARED HAMILTON: Yeah, Steffon said, we stopped doing what was working for us starting out the gate when we got the early lead.
Augusta Free Press coverage of the 2019 ACC Tournament is presented by Bear Creek. Serving Waynesboro, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and surrounding communities, Bear Creek provides a hassle-free process to help homeowners create outdoor living spaces that bring people together. Schedule a consultation at BearCreek.co.
Q. For both players, you guys got off to a great start. I mean, it looked like you were going to just run away with it. Did you have a feeling at that point that this was going to be your night?
STEFFON MITCHELL: Early on we were moving the ball. We turned them over quite a bit, very often in the beginning, but then we stopped getting away from it, stopped ball pressuring, gave up open lines to the rim, and that’s going to happen.
JARED HAMILTON: Yeah, I don’t think it was so much whose night it was. I think it was just we were playing basketball the right way, and we got away from it.
Q. Jim, if you could start and then maybe the players address it, as well. Ky did not have his best game tonight and really struggled in the first half, both shooting and he also had four turnovers. How disconcerting is it since as much of a leader he is when that happens, and how much does it kind of carry over to other guys?
JIM CHRISTIAN: You know, nobody is going to be great every night. There’s a lot of things that you can do in basketball. I think sometimes we dwell on offense. If a guy is not making shots, you can still play fantastic. It’s the other areas of the game. You can’t let one area, one particular area of your game affect how you can impact a game, and I think we did that from a bunch of guys the last couple games where you can’t judge how effective you’re playing by if the ball is going in the basket. That’s a great aspect, and that’s what everybody wants, but there’s a lot of ways to impact the game, and I think that’s the one great strength that Ky has, has had all year. He didn’t do it tonight, but he’s able to impact the game on the backboard, he’s able to impact the game getting a steal, able to impact the game in a lot of different ways, orchestrating our offense, and I think tonight when shots weren’t falling, it’s just he wasn’t impacting the game the way a great player — and he is a great player — usually does.
STEFFON MITCHELL: What Ky did was he had a tough game, but that’s our job to pick him up when it’s not working by contributing more scoring, getting more stops and just giving him more opportunities.
Share
Contributors
