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November 24, 2007
Philly Hoop Group Classic
Independence Bracket Final
The Palestra
Philadelphia, Pa.
Seton Hall 74 Virginia 60

Virginia Head Coach Dave Leitao:

Opening Comment

“Give credit to Seton Hall. What I thought might be a game that would be wide open, they decided to make it into a little bit of a backyard kind of game. They took the game from being pretty and just came after us on both ends. We really didn’t do a good job of handling that or much else after that. They made us play back on our heels. As I’ve tried to tell the guys, what do we have to go to when we’re not making our shots and our plays? I thought we didn’t do a very good job in a lot of areas today and as a result obviously didn’t win the game. We still have a lot of work to do. We’ve got to really do a good job as a group getting back in the gym, working on the fundamentals and understanding how and why you play the game of basketball a certain way. Today we didn’t play like that.”

What about Brian Laing’s performance (25 points, 10 rebounds) for Seton Hall?

“He’s been playing like that all year. I don’t think he did anything supernatural. I think he’s a terrific athlete who has terrific mid-range skills. He’s made himself a match-up problem. He did it yesterday, he did it today and he’s done it all year long. For a guy who’s been for a couple of years for Seton Hall a little bit more of a role player, he’s really stepping out to be a terrific player.”

Your defense looked so great against Arizona and you seemed to take a step back tonight. How do you explain that?

“Over 80 minutes in this tournament we played defense for about seven. The first seven minutes of the game yesterday (with Penn) we played and we really didn’t play defense the last 13 of that half, the second 20 minutes and for 40 minutes today we really didn’t play defense.”

Northwestern is next and you don’t have much time to bounce back.

“A lot of teams are going through what we are with a lot of games in a short period of time. It becomes a little bit more of a difficult game because they play such a different style and you have to prepare for it that way. We’re kind of unbalanced right now because we don’t have and haven’t had over the last two weeks a whole lot of practice time. There are missed assignments and the staples, especially on defense, really aren’t there the way they need to be and we need time to work on that. Obviously that’s not an excuse, there are a lot of teams that are playing in tournaments that don’t have a lot of practice time either.”

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