Jan. 7, 2006
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UNM Head Coach Ritchie McKay
That was a tough win, CSU was a good team. We expected them to put up a good fight and they did. I think we got a lot of good play from a lot of individuals; David Chiotti, Mark Walters were their usual solid selves.
Kyle Prochaska’s stats don’t show it but he does so many little things and when you’re guarding a team like CSU that has a match-up nightmare in Jason Smith, he’s kind of like our Danny Granger last year. I just thought we did a good enough job on the defensive end to win.
Joel Box played excellent off the bench. Daniel Farris was getting hard to keep out of the lineup. Daniel is only a freshman. To play that well defensively in your second Mountain West game means there are great things on the horizon.
I think whenever we get 15,000, 16,000 it’s going to be that much more difficult to beat us. It was a great environment.
CSU Head Coach Dale Layer
Our first half was terrible, soft. We were immature. We didn’t respond to the challenge that we knew that was facing us. They out played us in every phase in the first half, but you don’t win by playing a good half and that’s what we tried to do here. We tried to win by playing a good half and it doesn’t happen anywhere in the league.
It doesn’t happen especially against a good team. Much less in front of 16,000 people but you can’t blame it on the crowd. We didn’t step up with maturity or toughness.
We turned it on in the second half but it’s not good enough.
(Regarding Jason Smith’s early foul trouble)
That was a frustration but that wasn’t a difference. The other team was better than our team in the first half, all
12 of them.