On offense:
“I thought that VCU did a terrific job of playing physical and making us shoot some contested shots. Their numbers are impressive, their field goal percentage defense. And that is what they have been doing to people, what we shot at about 29 percent. I thought we were a little impatient and that a couple of times we turned it over when the game was just who was going to outlast who. We needed to move hard and screen hard. Mamadi gave us a nice lift with some inside buckets and then you thought that with Ty [Jerome] and Kyle [Guy], if they got the looks and took them, I am okay with it, especially with the way the offense needs to work today when you needed to use the dribble because of how aggressive they were offensively. We just kind of stuck with what we did, a couple of little things here and there to try and toughen up offensively.
On Kihei Clark:
“He about made me jump out of my shoes when he got that ten second call. Our staff said, ‘I have never seen anybody do that on an individual turn,’ and I said, ‘I have. Muggsy Bogues.’ I said that I used to play with him and he used to do that to people. I thought that was terrific. His heart and his ability, we watched this against high quality players, because [Marcus] Evans is a terrific player for them. He just sets the defense and how can you not be excited if you are behind that defensively. He played with great heart. His status is this: he is going to have surgery tomorrow. During the Morgan State game, he injured his wrist, got a hairline fracture, so he will have surgery tomorrow. He practiced a couple of days with the protective cast, what they do with football players, and you could see that a few times it affected him. We will just go from there as far as a timeline after surgery, based on how things heal and what he can do after that. He will go back into the cast and take it from there. But he said, ‘Coach, I want to play,’ so we practiced him with that cast on to protect the wrist and he was effective in practice and it didn’t affect his heart or his legs, that is for sure. I think that going left, it was an issue, but he brought what we needed with the drive. That is the status. Hopefully it will go well tomorrow and we will give you more updates going forward.”
On the offensive adjustments:
“They made the looks tough. They really tagged Kyle [Guy] hard and they were physical. Last year they were a little different in how they guarded him. They were very physical and on there, not to say that they were fouling, but they were physical. We had to really set up our cuts and Kyle [Guy] had to work to get off screens and that wouldn’t maybe be there after the first time or two. He had to move, move, get a little separation and then get open and mix in some attacking off the bounce. We got more of who we need to be offensively in the second half. I was scanning around and trying a few too many things in the first half, and we tried different little actions and sets, and I thought that we just needed to be more of who we were in the second half to give those guys a chance to move and get shots. Ty [Jerome] hit some shots and he was aggressive driving. You know that eventually you are going to get looks, it is hard to keep guys from getting open looks.
On Ty Jerome’s confidence:
“Well I have seen that in him from his first year to now. He shoots big shots and makes tough shots and sometimes, you have to pause, wait until it went in, and then you can say, ‘Alright.’ You have to give him the freedom to be aggressive and I told him that he has to be as sound and as smart as he can, but he has to be aggressive. That’s who he is. If it ever gets over the edge, alright, then you talk to him about it, although he is smart enough to know. That is, you know that, how he is wired and Kyle [Guy] is wired like that but Kyle [Guy] lets it come at the right times. Ty [Jerome] has usually got the ball in his hands a little more but you need that in those moments, and we have a couple of guys that have been in those hard-fought games.”
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