Virginia basketball players London Perrantes, Isaiah Wilkins and Malcolm Brogdon talk with reporters after the Cavs’ 73-53 win over NC State on Feb. 15.
Virginia interview highlights
Virginia Senior Guard Malcolm Brogdon
On preparing to guard different players week-to-week: “It’s definitely challenging. The way you play defense on each of them every night, depending on who you’re guarding and what their skill set is. But, your mindset doesn’t change. You have to figure out a way to stop them and frustrate them that night.”
On Cat Barber: “I love playing against great players. He’s a great player, a great scorer. I don’t know if I was extra juiced up. I’m juiced up every night, but I definitely looked forward to playing him.”
On his aggressiveness: “I was going to try to play within the offense, try to be aggressive and try to do what my team needed most which was to get stops and, in this game, score.”
On whether he takes more pride in scoring or keeping the opponent to low output: “Holding him to a low output, because if I can hold him to a low output then their team isn’t going to be as good.”
Virginia Sophomore Forward Isaiah Wilkins
On his rebounding: “I’m just trying to be all over the place. I feel like that really helps the team a lot: getting extra possessions and finishing possessions. I’m pretty much just running around and trying not to get hit.”
On bouncing back after the Duke game: “This is a really deep league and we had a quick turnaround, which I feel like was good for us, too. We just had to come out and play hard tonight because this is a really skilled team.”
On moving forward: “I feel like we’ve been playing a lot of very versatile teams, going forward we play a couple more ACC teams then it’s time for the tournament. We try to take it one game at a time and learn things from this game ,but also learn from the past. We just try to put ourselves in situations where we can always develop.”
On Anthony Gill: “As the other big, I feel like it is my job to either get him the ball or score in space so I can take some pressure off of him and allow him to get his one-on-one game going. Anthony is a really good basketball player and a great offensive player, so when he gets going he is hard to stop. Some teams are throwing different things at him. Some teams are trapping him and others are fronting him. We just try to get him the ball and let him work.”
Virginia Junior Guard London Perrantes
On the task of defending Cat Barber: “Malcolm takes guarding a guy like that personally. I think we all took this game pretty personally especially coming off of that loss at Duke. He stepped up big time for us tonight and when he starts it off strong like that we just follow behind him.”
On his three-point shooting: “I really didn’t have too much time to sit back and look at the Duke game with regards to my selection of shots. I was just taking what the defense gave me tonight. I just had some open threes and just wanted to play more aggressively.”
On putting the Duke game behind them: “Playing again quickly. Having a quick turnaround definitely helps. We can’t sit around and think about that too much because we have to get ready for the next game. Being able to play again tonight is probably the best thing to come after that game. We got that bad taste out of our mouths and were just ready to move on.”
On moving forward: “I feel like every game we want to take a step forward. Defensively we’ve been taking steps forward I think every single game. Obviously, with that loss we felt like we needed to do some things differently but every single game we want to take a step forward. We know it’s getting closer to March and the postseason and we want to start playing our best ball. I feel like we’re starting to get into that stride and we just want to keep playing with confidence and keep playing hard.”
On his thoughts early on: “I was just thinking, ‘we need a stop.’ We weren’t playing too well and our post-trap defense wasn’t very effective. They were shooting the ball really well and that was tough, but we knew it wouldn’t last the whole game, so we just wanted to keep playing hard and working together defensively.”
On Justin Anderson’s appearance: “We knew he was going to be there. Obviously, he brings the hype with the three years he played here. To have him bringing that extra fire for us is always a huge help. We love that guy and were very happy that he was here.”
On Anthony Gill: “Teams are playing really well defensively on him. We have played some teams that have been really physical against him. We have some other guys that have been stepping up for us, Isaiah [Wilkins] has been playing huge and so has [Mike] Tobey. At some point, teams are going to have pick their poison against our team. Anthony [Gill] has been playing extremely well still. He may not have been scoring as much, but he still is playing really well for us outside of scoring.”
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