Postgame Quotes

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2011-12 Virginia Basketball Postgame Quotes
November 29, 2011
Virginia 70, #14 Michigan 58

Virginia Head Coach Tony Bennett

On defensive play:
“I thought the second half we limited them to one and done, and they had to go late in the shot clock. They’re a very potent offensive team. But, to start the second half, they three or four times got right to the paint against us, and I said ‘that’s enough.’ Either we work on defense and make them earn from over the top outside, or we’re not going to be in this game. I thought the guys really started battling and making them plug in the lane, making them shoot those contested shots, and then coming back and rebounding. Again, when they shoot a lot of threes, and they were playing four guards a lot, you should be able to get some offensive rebounds, and then it would also control the defensive glass because they were spread out. I thought that was key for us.”

On Mike Scott’s offense:
“They were stretching us out, defensively with their four-guard line-ups, so we said, ‘okay we’re going to have to guard them that way, but they’re going to have to guard us inside.’ We tried to really get Mike touches. Then when he came back in, and I think he had two consecutive baskets, he was drawing a lot of attention. The two times he didn’t score, he got some of the kick-outs, and that’s when some guys hit some big shots. You have to account for Mike. He’s a good passer out of there, so if you decide to come at him, he usually finds some holes.”

On three-point shots:
“We were getting some good looks, even early. When they’d score, they’d run their one-three-one zone and guys were getting the rhythm looks. You’ve got to take them and shoot them with confidence. It can be contagious: you knock one or two down. Both teams were tired. I thought as the game wore on, you had to move the ball. We started to get some really good looks and banged them with some screens. Whether it was off a double team on Mike, our guys really got some rhythm shots.”

On preparation for a ranked team:
“What I told them yesterday was, ‘want to win more than you fear losing.’ Then before the game I said, ‘you have to play to win this one.’ That’s coach’s talk: play to win. We just talked about how it doesn’t go anywhere beyond what we usually do. Will you get back on defense? Will you be active on the ball? Limit them to one shot. Will you run your offense hard? To play, you’ve got to do what we’ve done from the fall, to the practices, to the games. I thought they understood how they needed to play in that game. Then, you need to play your heart out. I thought the effort has been there every game we’ve played this year. I was glad to see that for them, for us, that they finished this one strong.”

On beating a ranked team:
“It’s a little different than football. One game doesn’t make a season. It was an opportunity, and a great barometer for us. Where are we? We’re playing a team that is good. We watched them in Maui and they played well against some good teams. We needed to see where we were. We played against some good teams down in the tournament, but this was a notch up on our home court. We should take some confidence from it. The beautiful thing about college basketball is that that’s one game, and we’ll build on it. But you can be beat by anybody, and our guys understand that. That’s why they’ve got to just keep coming. We’ll certainly grow from it and be confident from it. I kept telling them: our principles are humility and passion. That was my message even during the timeouts. I said, ‘humility, know who you are and how you’ve got to play. Know your identity out there. And play your heart out: passion.’ I kept repeating that. That was our little chant when we came in. I think that’s always going to be the key for our team: understanding how we have to play to be successful and then having the passion and the heart to carry it on.”

Michigan Head Coach John Beilein

Opening Statement:
“I was really impressed with Virginia. I was impressed with them on film. I saw the progress that Tony made with Washington State, and I watched his teams keep getting better and better the more he worked with them, and the more he was able to recruit players that really fit with how he played. I think that a key thing for them right now is when Evans and Zeglinski are in at the same time. They are two terrific point guards and they’re really hard to defend. With Scott, you have a big man that can score and it’s tough to defend. As far as a combination of system and just playing, maybe Duke is the only one that I would rate with a similar style of success. They’re good. In the meantime, we got ourselves in foul trouble a little bit and that certainly hurt our first half performance. We were in foul trouble in the first half and we probably could have gotten out, but I don’t know if that would have helped us win the game given the way they played in the second half.”

On Virginia’s 15-0 run:
“Scott got three of those baskets. When we were down three or four [points], I wanted to give Trey [Burke] one minute’s rest because he is playing so many minutes, but I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. Their guards will just wear you down and then get middle penetration, which we do not want to allow but like I said, when you have two point guards out there who really see the floor and are unselfish that sets Harris up for all of his shots.”

On Virginia’s defense:
“It’s always going to be good as long as that man is coaching this team. They do a tremendous job. I’m not crazy about scoring 58 points but not a lot of teams may score 58 points against them. Thank goodness we made some threes to be able to do that. They’re tough to get easy baskets against and when you get them, you can’t miss them and we had several of those in the game.”

On what he said to his team when they took a timeout during the 15-0 run:
“We needed to come out and make sure that offensively we got a good shot. We needed to calm down and set up a good shot. Then defensively, we wanted to pay a little more attention to Scott. At that time, you don’t make a big change other than to say ‘Calm down. You have to guard at one end and execute at the other.'”

On Malcolm Brogdon:
“We had him as the seventh guy that we had to worry about on this team and he was excellent today. He posted up early. He is a tough, hardnosed kid and he played well.”

On the end of the first half:
“We were not out on them, but we did have a three or four point lead. I expected that type of game. I felt good being down [by one] when you’re on the road like that and playing against what I think is a really high quality team. I mean, as a team, they are very high quality so I didn’t feel that bad about being down at the half. It wasn’t that pivotal. What was pivotal was when with ten minutes to go they were really successful.”

On Virginia’s defensive strategy regarding Tim Hardaway Jr.:
“They really guarded him very well. Tim is not going to be the last guy that comes in here with a high profile that they pay a lot of attention to. He’s going to have to make tough shots against them and he had a tough night but he’ll bounce back.”

On whether he was concerned by the 15-0 run:
“They’re good. They are good. A lot of people get into runs but what are you going to do? You only have so many timeouts so you have to make a shot now and then to stop the run. We didn’t do that and they did. There’s not a whole lot that you can do. You’re always concerned when you lose and you wonder how you can get better.”

Virginia sophomore guard Joe Harris

General impressions of the game:
“We buckled down defensively and made some big shots on the offensive end too. Momentum kept coming in our favor.”

On slow offensive start in first half:
“We have struggled on the offensive end. I felt like we were knocking down some open looks that we had and we shot the ball a lot better than we have.”

On transition into his second season:
“Coach gave us that list at the end of the season on things that we need to work on. On my list was being able to get in the lane and finish, hitting floaters, finishing up at the basket. I really focused on it in the offseason.”

On playing Michigan:
“Michigan is anything but small. Their front four is a threat to shoot and drive. They basically have four guards out there.”

Virginia freshman guard Malcolm Brogdon

On how different the game felt against a ranked team:
“I felt like we played a really good team, a really well coached team, and we’ve been working really hard and preparing for this.”

On picking up on the offensive side of the ball:
“I think we just started to move the ball and got more patient. And then in the second half, when we got more patient, we started feeling our shots and hitting them and we got into a rhythm.”

On playing in front of a big and energized crowd:
“That’s was the biggest crowd we’ve had since I’ve been here. It gets me hyped honestly. It really does. It’s exciting.

On shooting the 3-pointer after rebounding own miss:
“I felt like if I had missed that Coach would’ve been on me because it was probably smarter to pass it back out, but I felt like I was sort of in the rhythm to shoot it.”

Virginia senior guard Sammy Zeglinski

On Malcolm Brogdon’s performance:
“He made some big shots for us and he played some pretty good defense. That’s huge to get those to come down. I was struggling on my shot a little bit, and so was Joe, and Malcolm made some pretty big shots for us.”

On slow start in first half:
“I thought we were getting some pretty good looks, we just didn’t knock them down, but we knew that if we stuck to our defensive principles and kept wearing them down the shots would eventually fall for us and that’s exactly what happened in the second half.”

On Mike Scott’s performance:
“We wanted to get it to him down low. I don’t think they can handle him down low; he was making great decisions. He got to the line and he was finishing. He’s a big part of our success tonight, definitely. Mike made a great adjustment in the second half.”

Michigan sophomore guard Tim Hardaway, Jr.

On Virginia overall:
“It’s a team that came out prepared and did their job. I got overshot, I got those two early fouls and that was it.”

On defense:
“Virginia is a very talented team on defense. It seems like they practice defense everyday throughout the summer and in practice, they don’t practice offense at all it seems like. They were just coming out playing hard nose defense, locking and trailing when we came off our five-three, five-four screens, and they just did their job.”

On what coach said in timeout after 15-0 run in second half:
“Calm down, and save plays. Coach said we have a lot of time to come back. We’ve come back from these deficits before in the Big Ten last season. We just have to learn from our mistakes and come back on Saturday with a different mentality.”

Michigan senior guard Stu Douglass

On Michigan defense:
“I feel like we lost [Joe Harris] a couple of times, he had a lot of big shots in the left wing and some big threes. They got some easy baskets on easy rebounding and we didn’t box out well enough. Just little things here and there that kept adding up, and with the crowd reacting to it and they kept building on it and eventually we just couldn’t come back.”

On Virginia’s three-pointers:
“Scott’s a heck of weapon for them, we tried double teams, we tried multiple things to attack him and to create him to create offense for us. But they passed out of it well and fought through it. They just found the open shots.”

Michigan senior guard Zack Novak

On defense between this game and when Michigan played Duke:
“I think the big thing is the rebounding. I’m going to guess we had fewer possessions this game. We missed a lot of the shots we were taking. We were missing layups and open threes, and we took a couple of shots that we shouldn’t have taken.”

On Virginia’s run:
“Looks like we were going on with a little lead, and they came back. You have to work through those things. We’re playing on the road and you’ve got to go through it. It’s going to happen especially when you’re on their court. There were some of our principles that they forced us to break defensively.”

On the loss:
“All losses sting, but this team will be pretty good in the ACC this year, especially at home. Scott gets tough, they kept getting better and better. They really defend well. I think that’s a good team we just played.”