Postgame Quotes

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VIRGINIA BASKETBALL
Postgame Quotes
Virginia 94, Northwestern 52

Virginia Head Coach Dave Leitao

Opening Statement:
“One of the things that we talked to the team a little bit about is the team’s ability to bounce back. I don’t think anybody around here is too happy about what happened on Saturday, and once we got back into the gym and started talking about it, looking at it, our focus was on that next day, that next game. You couldn’t do anything about it. I want the guys to understand our ability to bounce back, and I think it happened in the first half. It’s going to be because we can shoot the ball and obviously we did a really good job, 61 percent in the first half and over 50 for the game. But if we can get to the point, I think we did that in the first half… that we can shoot the basketball and get good shots when we want to, and then play defense. And if you can do both of those things, then you have the makings of a pretty good team. And obviously we’re not there yet, we’ve got to make some specific improvements on the defensive end, but I thought we guarded their offense on a one day preparation pretty well… they got a minimum amount of back door cuts, or post-ups, things that they try to do pretty well. Our bench and our quickness gave us some advantages, and obviously we were able to get out to a lead, maintain it, sustain ourselves throughout the game.”

Would you have rather had a stiffer challenge?
“I just play the game that they gave us. I don’t know… Northwestern, Big Ten team, pretty good team. Northwestern is obviously going through a challenge. They’ve got young guys that they’re playing and their potentially best player is out of the team right now, his mom suffering from breast cancer, so they’re not at full strength physically and I’m sure emotionally they’re not at full strength. They’ll get better as he comes back and as the team kind of gels and gets a little older. I’ll play whoever both leagues give us to play.”

Was the three-point shooting a game plan?
“No, we are a good shooting team. And we took 32 today because 32 was the number that presented itself because they played a lot of zone. And I’m not afraid to do that because we can make them. We shot 50 percent while taking that many, it’s only a bad thing when you are taking over 30 and not making too many. As long as we are taking them in rhythm, and coming off of something, and just not shooting cause it’s there, then I keep encouraging the guys to do that.”

On Mamadi Diane
“He’s a lot better and more consistent I told him the other day, even… He wouldn’t shoot as well outside of this arena, and that hasn’t happened as of yet. I think he has turned the corner in regards to that and hopefully we can keep him consistent in that way.”

On Calvin Baker
“He’s doing a wonderful job for us, he didn’t miss a shot today. He got back today to playing his role… Mentally he is a college junior, or third year as it is known here, and so he brings some things to the table… and I think I know what we are going to get from him.”

Sophomore guard Calvin Baker

On the team
“Coach always says if you play defense, it’ll carry on into offense, so we felt real good pressing the ball and got our rhythm on offense. They were in the zone, so to get them out of the zone, we had to shoot the ball, and that’s what we did

On Sean Singletary:
“Sean’s always an unselfish player, we fortunately were making shots today and that got his assists up”

On his and the team’s performance:
“I was shooting the ball with confidence. I feel like I was real efficient, I felt like I was in a rhythm. Sean told me when you’re in a drive kick it, and that really helped a lot…On the defensive end, we took away their Princeton style offense, and that’s what really felt good…This week a little time off will be good because we’ve been real busy lately, but like coach says, we don’t use that as an excuse. It’s a marathon not a sprint, and that’s what we’re going to do, keep staying focused.”

On the game:
“It’s tough for anybody to play a good team that shoots the ball that well. Chances are the shooting team is going to come out on top…Anytime you got a team with a competitive drive and respect for themselves with a loss like [Seton Hall], you want to get back in the gym and get things right, and we plan on having a great season this year so we had to turn a page after that and come out here and get a win…When you got your mojo going and everybody has rhythm and you’re sharing the ball, then you’re going to have nights like that…

On the upcoming game:
“Syracuse has a Hall of Fame coach and they’re going to be prepared so we have to go out there and get stops, and they’re going to be playing zone so we have to be aggressive, swing the ball, get guys loose, and hopefully we’ll get some shots to fall…What Coach Leitao is trying to teach us is you have to play at this level at all times, whether at home, on the road, or neutral site, and that’s what we lacked playing against Seton Hall, but fortunately we’re 6-1 so we’re going to come out and just try and put a lot of points up and get a lot of stops on defense.”

Northwestern Head Coach Bill Carmody

Reflection on the game…
“Needless to say, down by forty points, we were never really in the game. Virginia is a great three-point shooting team, and we just were not able to do anything about it. We played one-three-one defense a lot, and that does open up some shots around the corner. It seemed like they knocked down everything. We were not able to mount anything. Singletary was distributing well and running things. He did not take as many shots as he normally does, but he seemed to be getting the ball in the right pace.”

On Sean Singletary…
“The first couple times down the court Singletary tried to penetrate, and our five-guy took it from him a couple times. After that, he seemed to settle down and be in control of things.”

On Virginia’s ability to knock down three-pointers and if they were able to scout three-point shooters…
“They have been doing it all year and last year too. We know who they are. If it’s just one guy you can block him a little bit, but with so many different guys [capable of three-point shooting], it was just too much for us.”

On Northwestern’s starting lineup…
“We have been starting three freshmen every game until tonight, when we started two. They have not been playing too many minutes, and they do not know exactly what they are doing yet, certainly not in a game like this.”

On the number of turnovers tonight…
“I do not know how many turnovers we had. We had a lot there at the end of the game. We usually only have around eight turnovers a game. We force a lot of turnovers and get a lot of steals. It did not seem like we did that tonight.”

On how Virginia was able to capitalize during the game…
“Let us just say, we gave them more and more confidence throughout the game.”

Northwestern Guard Michael Thompson

Thoughts on the game…
“We didn’t come out with the intensity that we wanted to come out with. They came out shooting the ball well, so the entire game we were trying to come from behind, but we just didn’t do what we had to do to get the victory on the road.”

Thoughts on Virginia’s offense in the first half…
“We were just trying to stick with the game plan, with what the coach told us to do, and try to run our offense, but we were taking our shots a little too fast. We aren’t used to doing that; we’re used to going to our offense and making their defense pay when they get lazy late in the shot clock.”