Jan. 19, 2008
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New Mexico Men’s Basketball head coach quotes
Air Force Falcons vs. New Mexico Lobos
Air Force head coach Jeff Reynolds:
“I thought (New Mexico) defense was good. I thought we got some open looks early, that didn’t go down. I thought the difference in the game was (New Mexico’s) physicality. They were very physical. There was a lot of pushing and shoving going on and we didn’t respond as well as we needed to.”
“We shoot the ball well…I know we were what 0 for 12, 0 for 15, I know 6 of them were pretty good final looks that didn’t fall. Shoots fall all of the sudden the game is a little different. Being on the road…we choose not to shoot today which was a coaches decision which may have been the wrong decision but we should have gotten them up and got a good shot.”
New Mexico head coach Steve Alford:
“I thought the difference was that J.R. (Giddens) did a great job defensively and I think our team really feeds off that just because of who he is as a player. This was a very good defensive effort. We knew this was going to be a tough game because [Air Force] came in very confident. They came in really running their stuff well. For us to hold them to 27 percent shooting – their worst of the year – says a lot about what we did defensively. That’s an area that we’ve struggled with the past couple games and we made a lot of improvements in tonight’s game”
(on whether the focus on defense slows the offensive production):
“It might, but there aren’t going to be a lot teams that will beat us if we hold them to 44 points and 27 percent shooting. We’re going to learn in year one that we’re building a foundation. I’ve challenged my seniors that this isn’t about one year. It’s about building a foundation and that foundation has to be built on being very hard to play against on the defensive end.”