Courtesty of @C. Level’s postgame interview with the head coach on the radio. Couple quick hits here…
You knew this was gonna be a tough game and maybe a few too many turnovers in the first half but I thought your kids showed a lot of fight in the second:
“Early in the game, it’s what I said in the locker room, we need to have more scrap. There’s a few plays, I thought we had a couple of good looks to start the game and we turned them down. When you are short-handed like we are today, every ball that comes off the rim, you better put your nose through it. You gotta play the game with a different level and intent to get in the middle of every physical play. I thought early in the game we weren’t doing that. We didn’t come up with a lot of loose balls. We didn’t play the game physically, they got offensive rebounds. Obviously, turning the ball over a bit too much and that was my fault. I gotta do a better job of giving us some open flow actions to get the ball moving. We ran too many sets early just to try to control tempo, but I’ve got to do a better job and our team has to do a better job of scrapping.”
A day with no Warren and Pop is like 1-10 from the field, it’s a credit to your kids and their fight that this game was as close as it was to the end:
“We’re not playing the game for close, as you know, we’re playing the game to win and that’s what I was disappointed in. That’s what I said to them in the locker room. You get games like this and I said it before the game was like it’s gonna come down to, yeah maybe you miss it making shots, that’s a part of it. But literally, there’s like three or four times a ball is bouncing in front of us and we didn’t go pursue it. That part is the part where I think you get rewarded when you play the game in a way that’s aggressive. And at the end, we were the one coming up with loose balls. We were the one that we’re coming up with offensive rebounds when they were getting boxed out like D5 did at the end, just still go make a play and you get rewarded for making a play. This team does have scrap, we’ll get better because of it and we’ll be ready for the next one.”
You knew this was gonna be a tough game and maybe a few too many turnovers in the first half but I thought your kids showed a lot of fight in the second:
“Early in the game, it’s what I said in the locker room, we need to have more scrap. There’s a few plays, I thought we had a couple of good looks to start the game and we turned them down. When you are short-handed like we are today, every ball that comes off the rim, you better put your nose through it. You gotta play the game with a different level and intent to get in the middle of every physical play. I thought early in the game we weren’t doing that. We didn’t come up with a lot of loose balls. We didn’t play the game physically, they got offensive rebounds. Obviously, turning the ball over a bit too much and that was my fault. I gotta do a better job of giving us some open flow actions to get the ball moving. We ran too many sets early just to try to control tempo, but I’ve got to do a better job and our team has to do a better job of scrapping.”
A day with no Warren and Pop is like 1-10 from the field, it’s a credit to your kids and their fight that this game was as close as it was to the end:
“We’re not playing the game for close, as you know, we’re playing the game to win and that’s what I was disappointed in. That’s what I said to them in the locker room. You get games like this and I said it before the game was like it’s gonna come down to, yeah maybe you miss it making shots, that’s a part of it. But literally, there’s like three or four times a ball is bouncing in front of us and we didn’t go pursue it. That part is the part where I think you get rewarded when you play the game in a way that’s aggressive. And at the end, we were the one coming up with loose balls. We were the one that we’re coming up with offensive rebounds when they were getting boxed out like D5 did at the end, just still go make a play and you get rewarded for making a play. This team does have scrap, we’ll get better because of it and we’ll be ready for the next one.”
