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VIRGINIA BASKETBALL
Postgame Quotes
Virginia 84, Boston College 66
Virginia Head Coach Dave Leitao
On the key to the game:
“From a scouting report standpoint, the biggest key coming into the game for our team and, most importantly, for me, and we talked about it Thursday, Friday, and today, was to have fun. I can tend to be an ornery guy, and it’s been a long three weeks, and as the days passed I got more and more ornery. It changes the mood in the gym, and you forget sometimes that they’re young people and you have to work with them. When their minds are clouded, their feet are slow. If their minds are clear then they have a better chance to perform and they did that.”
On Virginia’s defense:
“Boston College is a tough team to prepare for because of their offensive execution. We tried some zone as much as anything to throw fastball, curveball, fastball, curveball, so that they didn’t continue to try to beat us down in man-to-man. We played defense well enough to get out and run. I thought in the beginning of the second half Sean [Singletary]was magnificent and has been since the second half of the Duke game and once we got out we felt good about it. One of the things we hadn’t been doing was making shots. Today we made shots at good times.”
On putting Sean Singletary back into the game with two fouls with 5:10 left in the first half:
“It was not just the lead we were down four but the pace of the game went against us. Sean does tend to get in foul trouble because he’s so active. Coming back with him with two fouls was a gamble, although a little less because we were playing zone, but it was a gamble that paid off, and it got us to 35-35 at halftime.”
On Diane hitting his first shot:
“If I recall games that we’ve played, particularly in this building, if we get off to good starts, it’s usually a corner three by either Mo or Adrian. It didn’t mean we had won the game, but it was a good sign [that he made his first shot]. And he stayed aggressive. He’s doing a little better with the things we ask him to do to get more space, and he’s rebounding better and defending better. We’ve just got to get him and Adrian to be that inevitable word more consistent.”
Junior Forward/Guard Mamadi Diane
On the team’s good start in the game:
“Any time you come out and make big plays on defense, it definitely helps you pick up momentum for the rest of the game.”
On the win being a team effort:
“You could tell our guys were out there going hard and having fun; just playing really. That picked up everybody’s spirits.”
On UVa’s run in the second half:
“We came out and had a couple of big plays. The crowd really got into it. We were just out there having fun and everything came together for us.”
On the recent losses the team has suffered:
“Every day it’s all about the next game. That’s how we practice every day, looking forward to the next game. Nothing we did before this was really on anyone’s mind.”
Senior Guard Sean Singletary
On coming back from the VT loss:
“Even though we had a loss, everybody wasn’t down. The atmosphere was pretty high. We had a lot of confidence coming into the game and after we got over the hump, the first couple of minutes, we got some stops and everything that Coach Leitao has been saying all year is ringing true. Everybody gets a little more confidence.”
On Mamadi Diane’s good game:
“I really had a lot of confidence in him going into the game. The way he was playing defense and the way he was cutting before he even took a shot, I could tell he was playing with energy and that his shots were going to fall. Any time you play with confidence and play hard then, if you’re a shooter, your shots are going to fall. If you can defend really well and play with energy then you are going to defend well that night. So, if you can just keep it going and just keep it in the back of your mind that you’ve got to play with confidence and you’ve got to play with energy, then you’ll be in good shape and our team will do a lot better.”
Boston College Head Coach Al Skinner
On what happened in the second half…
“The problem occurred when we missed some free throws and we didn’t necessarily convert. When we missed some shots, we allowed them to get into transition. The thing that is important to their club is that you know that Sean [Singletary] is going to get points, but [Mamadi] Diane and [Adrian] Joseph were able to. He needs help like everyone else and he got it tonight. They had obviously had a very fine game. We just did not do a good job on Diane most of the night. Joseph got his late. I think that’s the difference in the ball game. They shot the ball pretty well; they got some scorers to give them help. We just didn’t do a good job of defending them; along with the fact, like I said, we missed free throws and allowed them to have empty trips down the floor in the start of the second half.”
On having an inconsistent month…
“When you play on the road you can’t afford to get distracted and you have to have a certain amount of discipline as far as the way you are going to execute offensively and defensively. We just didn’t have that this evening. That’s something we’ve got to improve upon and that unfortunately happens with a young team sometimes. Hopefully we will get better at it.”
On Adrian Joseph being scoreless at halftime…
“I didn’t realize he was scoreless at halftime, but again a lot of his opportunities came late. They had already sustained a lead when he got a lot of his scores. He helped them keep the lead, but he didn’t help them get it. Like I said, Sean did a good job of pushing the ball and attacking it. Diane was pretty effective in the first half. They have a number of different guys scoring throughout the game. Obviously we didn’t have any consistency on the offensive end.”
On the chance of Sean Singletary getting a third foul in the first half…
“He’s a smart enough player; he’s not going to do that. Hopefully it will come in the flow, but I’m not going to make an effort to go directly at him. Unless you have really good offensive players, a lot of the times that’s not going to work when you start focusing in on that.”
“I think the problem more for us was that in the last couple of possessions we didn’t handle the ball well at the end of the first half. We had a transition and a two-point lead; we shot an open three, which is okay; then we get an offensive rebound and an offensive foul and allowed them to tie the ball game at halftime. I thought it was more our execution and the way we performed because [Singletary] wasn’t going to be that effective defensively because he just wasn’t going to assert himself.”
Guard Tyrese Rice
On the results of the second half:
“I just felt that we let it get away from us. I take responsibility being that I am one of the upperclassmen and leaders of the team. I know I missed four free throws and we missed a lot of free throws early in the second half which led to some opportunities for them. We just have to correct that while we’re on the road because we have to make free throws and we have to capitalize on everything.”
More on the second half:
“I don’t know whether we weren’t prepared in the second half or that we just lost focus but we have to come out and be ready in the second half of games.”
On his increased scoring in the second half:
“I really don’t know what I was thinking. We had a little trouble. Some of our teammates got fouls. We got to the line and we just weren’t capitalizing. I think that was the difference between the first and second half. It wasn’t just me trying to take over the game. It was just an added number of things that we didn’t capitalize on.”