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VIRGINIA BASKETBALL
Postgame Quotes
Virginia 74, Brown 50
Virginia Head Coach Dave Leitao
Opening Statement:
“Not too much to say other than it’s always good to get back to winning and we have to be happy with that, understanding that you have to win a certain way and stating goals for ourselves. I thought we did some of that today, particularly in the second half on defense, where I thought we picked up the pace and wore them down a little bit more. We got a chance from there to rebound and stretch it out a little bit which we weren’t able to do in the first half. We have to use this as potential for a measuring stick; we have a very difficult game on Saturday afternoon (at Virginia Tech). It’s an ACC road game and it’s our neighbors down south and it’s good for everyone to compete. Hopefully we can get a win against them.”
On his concerns at this point in the season:
“I have a number of concerns. We have to get a little bit healthier; we are nicked up with just minor things but it is affecting the rhythm of practice. We are going to take tomorrow off to try and rest some bodies. Defensively we need to continue to get better and rebounding, we need to get a whole lot better there. Today we didn’t take the best shot on every possession and we have to really try to do that. This team is going to have to do those things in order to be successful each and every night.”
On Brown’s 52.4 shooting percentage in the first half:
“We talked about it. The percentage was too high. I don’t know how much, maybe 50/50 of it, was them executing very well. We know their offense very well and they pass the ball very well. They can take advantage, especially when they spread the ball out, of any kind of breakdown. They did a pretty good job of that. There were those instances where we broke down too. They forced you to play the whole shot clock and for the most part we did that. But when we didn’t, we paid a price for it.”
On playing at Virginia Tech this weekend:
“We have 15 more games and this is an important one. On the road it’s not easy and we have eight of those. You have to steal as many as you possibly can. I am sure they feel it is important to them, just coming off a loss to Duke. Each one of the games we have played thus far have been very close and have come down to a possession here and a possession there, so we have to be ready.”
Brown Head Coach Jesse Agel
On his thoughts at the half:
“The biggest thing that we had to do was play tough and play hard. I thought that we were competing the whole way through; obviously we weren’t where we wanted to be. We wanted to be up 20 when the game was over. But, what I was looking for in this game especially was our effort level because I don’t think we played with that 40-minute effort against a very solid American team the other night.”
“I thought our guys competed. We don’t have much depth, so there’s a lot of onus on our five guys who start to play extended minutes and I thought they did a great job with that.”
On shutting down Landesberg
“He’s a tremendous player who’s going to do a lot of great things here. We had a senior who’s a pretty strong player on him, who’s played against a lot of people in his time and is also a New York product, and he forced him into some tough shots. Landesberg gets to the basket, he’s very smooth and Chris (Skrelja) loves basketball and takes those things personally. He’s been our best on ball defender and has had a lot of success defending very good players.”