UVA coach Tony Bennett
On Virginia’s level of play throughout the game:
“I think [it was] 25-to-3. We jumped off, making shots and really just defending the right way. Are you going to make all those shots? No. I told them at halftime that I thought we got seduced, or it was a little bit of fool’s gold, into shot selection. The shot discernment wasn’t strong all of the sudden and that lead to nine fast break points. I got on them a little bit, not too bad, and said ‘who are you?’ The start was amazing basketball, both offensively and defensively, and maybe the ball doesn’t go in, but you can’t all of the sudden start trying to turn it into a pickup game, as it looked like for stretches and that wasn’t acceptable. I thought they righted the ship the second half, ran harder offense, got the right kinds of shots and shored up the defense.”
On the development of Jay Huff:
“[Jay Huff] is continuing to improve, he shows some great flashes offensively. He’s such a threat: he can stretch you from three but he can put it on the floor. When he’s on the floor we do a couple different things offensively. But he’s doing a good job and he’s been practicing hard. I challenged him today to go after that ball with two hands. I thought he left some rebounds out there. But, he’s progressing in the right direction and playing hard and that was good to see some of the things he did.”
On moving on from Duke loss:
“I think every ACC game is so important, it really is. Yes, there was the hype for a rivalry game and of course playing a top 10 team and playing at Duke. But, how are we going to respond? We responded the right way. Really the right way, and then it seems like we slipped a bit. But, restorative? I don’t know. It’s just getting back to playing and play again on Saturday and play the right way. I thought we needed to address some things defensively and it’s a little different, the way Duke could exploit you wasn’t quite the same as Wake Forest. I like how we corrected some things to start the game defensively that weren’t there against Duke. We were really committed together to stopping the ball. That was the point of emphasis in practice for a couple days, and we did a good job of that. It’s always good to come back home.”
Wake Forest coach Danny Manning
Opening Statement:
“Well for us not the start that we wanted to get off to. Virginia came out and did some really good things offensively and made some tough shots. We weren’t able to get a stop. I thought far too many times they were able to get a hand on the ball and tip it out for an offensive rebound. They are obviously a very talented team and they are playing at a high level right now. It doesn’t matter who we are playing, we can’t come out and start games the way we started today. It put us in far too great of a hole.”
On Jay Huff and his development:
“We are familiar with Jay. He’s done a tremendous job in the program of developing and getting better. We knew coming into the ball game he was what we term a ‘face-up big’. A big guy that can step out on the perimeter and make shots and he hit a three and made all of his free throws. He did a good job for them. He gave them some really good minutes, obviously with 12 points.”
On what led to the start and the decision to play man-to-man defense:
“It’s based on when we score we don’t score things of that nature. That’s how we’ve been doing our defense as of late. You know when they jump out to that big of a lead and you got to try a be a little more disruptive and make them work a little bit more. That was the thought process behind that. They jumped out to an early lead like I said. They made some tough shots. We had some breakdowns where they missed shots and we weren’t able to secure the ball. They also made some tough shots, we have to do a better job of guarding certain guys. Going into it we knew that their perimeter guys, when you talk about Guy, Jerome and Hunter, were really talented.”
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