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Feb. 15, 2006
VIRGINIA HEAD COACH Dave Leitao
Knowing coming in at this time of year games like this are very difficult to play emotionally as anything else. We tried to make sure we got our team ready to play the game much more from the neck up and understanding that if we’re going to continue to make progress that games like this you’re going to have to play through as much the psychological part of it as the physical. I don’t know if we did a good job of it in that area.
We’ve got to look at the film and get back to work and understand what we’re on this journey for. Most importantly–what we have to do to give ourselves the chance to be more successful. We have to learn to play a certain way and I don’t think we got that accomplished today.
All of our issues tonight stemmed from our lack of intensity on defense. We weren’t in their faces and we allowed dribble penetration by almost everybody. We found ourselves fouling people in the middle of the floor which is something we’ve tried not to do all season long. Rebounds are always connected to effort and I don’t think we boxed out and we didn’t claim loose balls that clanged off the rim and as a result they got to them. To me it’s a lack of focus, lack of attention.
I’ll take the win. I’m not going to give that back. The team knows that when we get back to the gym tomorrow, I’m not going to be very happy. I think we can recapture the energy, I just worry that we can’t be up and down emotionally at this time of the year as much. Again, we’re still learning–we’re not as mature as we need to be. That’s why we’ve won a lot at home and not a lot on the road. A lot of teams across the country are like that and that’s always a byproduct of not being as experienced or as mature as teams need to be.
LONGWOOD HEAD COACH MIKE GILLIAN
Being realistic about a game like this, we talk about these as opportunities. We want to take advantage of them; we’re still in the infant stages of building a Division I basketball program. You can look at injuries any way you want–the reality of them is they happen, they occur and you can’t lament the fact that you don’t have certain players available to play.
Some very positive things happened for us tonight. I think in our situation, although it’s not appropriate because they are not in the situation, my comparison would be–if a team like Virginia had to play without Sean Singletary and J R Reynolds, what would their answers to those questions be. That’s where we sit tonight going into this game.
I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t realize we shot 60 percent in the first half. That number I never looked at. I looked at the fact that we had no offensive rebounds. Even though we’re small, we’re generally a good offensive rebounding team. I look at turnovers and we turned the ball over. I looked at their shooting percentage because they were making everything. We wanted them to shoot jumpers and they made them. They were shooting threes lights out.