Postgame Quotes

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Virginia Head Coach Tony Bennett

On second half performance:
“The two keys that hurt us in the game [were] 60% shooting by UNC-Wilmington and our carelessness with the ball with 10 turnovers. They’re a hard team to guard; he has well-organized schemes as far as their sets. There are a lot of guys that can hit threes – Ahmad Grant was five of six from three and [Chad] Tomko – I’ve seen him win games so they put pressure on you to really chase some screens and they certainly out-executed us and we were casual. We got a little bit away from who we were and we had a chance when we were up 15 or 16 but we couldn’t put them away. I thought we lost our way in the second half. Credit to them; I knew that – I’ve watched them play and we were thankfully at full strength to play them this time. If we would have played them when we didn’t have Mike [Scott] that would have been hard. I respect that team and I told their coach after the game, ‘I watched your tapes a lot and I’m impressed. Your stuff is hard to guard, especially with your shooters.’”

On lulls in the first- and second-halves with subs in the game:
“[Substitutions] gave us great lifts against Georgia Tech and Miami, games where guys have really come in and sparked us. Tonight it wasn’t working and I perhaps put in too many guys at a time. There’s not a ton of separation and I have to maybe just look at one or two at a time with a starter. That was disappointing and I know those guys were disappointed, but we will learn from it certainly… We walk a fine line and when we are sharp and focused, we will compete. When we get away from it, then we become below average. Not to take anything away from Wilmington– they are hard to guard, but we did not do our part.”

On finding a way to win:
“We made some good individual plays: the 50-50 balls at the end – Sammy [Zeglinski] ran one down and certainly Jontel [Evans] – that was terrific. The individual plays like the big basket by Sylven [Landesberg] when we ran a set for him and he made a nice move and then to hit the game winner, we executed that. Those went well, but that isn’t the way we are going to have to play to be competitive and successful in this league as far as a team. You are not just going to out-individualize people at our level. We were fortunate. We will learn from it. I am thankful for the win, but we realize that we have stuff we have to clean up and we can’t ever stop.”

On substituting Mustapha Farrakhan for Mike Scott in the final two minutes:
“Coach McKay is the one who whispered that in my ear. He said, ‘Maybe we can get one of our bigs out and switch the ball screen one through four.’ We were having a little trouble with one of their other screens and we haven’t worked on switching it and we kept running into it. That’s also why I decided to get Jontel off of Tomko because his experience started showing down the stretch but I thought if we got something and we could have a little better ball handling on the offensive end, attack them off the dribble, but defensively we could switch a screen or two that might help us. It almost hurt us on the glass… [Matt Wilson] seemed to have a pretty easy point-blank shot that didn’t go in so you give up a little bit, but we ran down some loose balls with the guards out there that we might not have otherwise.”

UNC Wilmington Head Coach Benny Moss

On the final moments of the game:
“With a minute and a half left we are down two and get three point-blank shots and none of them go in. But again, we didn’t drop our head – we hung in there – we held them to one free throw and then we came down and made the three to tie the game. Then you just have to tip your hat – (Sylven) Landesberg made a big play and that is why he is one of the best players in the ACC. He made the play to win the game.”

On sequence when Sylven Landesberg hit the game-winning shot:
“We thought he was going to get the ball. He is their guy and rightfully so. He is very good – as much motion as they run, we didn’t know as much what to expect, because we are not as familiar with them as teams in our league (CAA). You have a familiarity in your league – you know what certain teams are going to run done the stretch when they’ve got to get a basket. They have go-to plays and really not much – we just told our guy to guard dribble penetration – play our principles and expect anything, but play our principles. If you’re supposed to help – help. If you’re supposed to hold a block – hold a block. To his credit he came off that single angle down screen and he came off it with a little too much space and he got the open look that he needed.”

On UVa’s defense holding UNCW scoreless for over 10 minutes in the first half:
“They are a very good defensive team. A lot of it had to do with their defense and they dug in. They took their intensity to another level. I also thought we got away from what we were doing early and what we regrouped and did in the second half. Other then that stretch I thought we flowed pretty well tonight – as far as we got out – we ran – we attacked in transition. There wasn’t a pause after the transition. We got into our motion and sets a lot quicker. I thought in that stretch we started walking the ball up a little bit. They are so good defensively in the half court, you can’t let them lineup and guard a set play. They are too good, they are too strong –they are too well taught. Coach Bennett does a great job. He is a very good coach, as good as there is. I thought we got back to that, but that stretch really hurt us and allowed them to get away from us a little at the end of the half.”

On using game film of UVa’s defense as a teaching tool:
“As coaches by nature sometimes the best plays are stolen from someone else. You can do it on the defensive end too. We are going to watch film and break Virginia down and show our guys their attention to detail on box-outs. In the first half we had zero offensive rebounds and we are a pretty good offensive rebounding team – we didn’t get any. It was textbook box-outs by Virginia. We will break some of the game film down and use it as teaching points for our guys with what they did.